When F1 forced an incredible last-minute rule change

Back in the days of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna demand for tickets at Suzuka was such that you had first to apply for the right to buy one, and every year three million people would do that. Hard to believe in this era - there were lots of gaps in the grandstands last weekend - but that's the way it was.

If the pulling power of Formula 1 is no longer what it used to be, still there abides a passion for it in Japan, and Suzuka remains one of the great cathedrals of motor racing, the only sadness being that inevitably the challenge of it, as with Spa, has been lessened by the latest generation of cars. Anything that serves to equalise the drivers, to turn daunting corners into 'easy flat' is surely to be deprecated.

Still, until Ross Brawn is able to effect necessary changes for the next Formula 1, it is what it is: the cornering speeds of the current cars may be mind-blowing, but don't expect much in the way of order changes. Kevin Magnussen's inventive pass of Felipe Massa apart, Sunday's overtaking was essentially confined to DRS into Turn 1.

Recently I was chatting with a friend - an old friend, as you will see from what follows - about the deleterious effect on racing of downforce, something inevitably relished more by the drivers than by those paying to watch them.

When once asked to define his ideal Formula 1 car, Frank Williams replied instantly: "Easy - a thousand horsepower and no wings!" Imagine, my pal murmured, if we had that now, and that got us on to reminiscing about the 1969 Monaco Grand Prix, which we both attended in our youth.

It was not, I have to say, an especially memorable race, with the front row cars - Jackie Stewart's Matra and Chris Amon's Ferrari - both retiring early, but it was notable for providing Graham Hill with his final grand prix victory, and for the fact that in the course of the meeting a major rule change was introduced in a manner barely credible today.

Wings had come to Formula 1 the previous year, introduced at Spa by Ferrari and Brabham, and although they were small and unsophisticated their worth was instantly apparent, as Amon remembered: "I was on pole by almost four seconds, but in fact I ran with and without the wing in practice, and set about the same times - what you gained in the corners you lost on the straights. Jacky Ickx decided against using it in the race, but although I went with it, I can remember thinking, 'Now what can of worms are we opening here...?'"

Following a meeting after Thursday practice in Monaco, the FIA's competition arm announced wings were to be banned immediately...

Every other team soon followed suit, and perhaps inevitably, given the way Colin Chapman's mind worked, the wings introduced by Lotus - mounted very high, and on flimsy struts - were the most extreme.

While they worked well, these were 'suck it and see' days in aerodynamics, and more than once the inadequate struts collapsed, resulting - of course - in instant loss of downforce.

At Barcelona's Montjuich Park in 1969 both Hill and Jochen Rindt had catastrophic accidents for just this reason, Rindt suffering injuries that kept him out of the next race, Monaco. It was now that Jochen, who had anyway hated the whole concept of wings from the start, feeling they detracted from the art of car control, wrote to Chapman:

"I got hold of this incredible picture, which pretty much explains the accident - I didn't know it would fly that high. Now to the whole situation, Colin. I have been racing in F1 for five years, and have made one mistake [I rammed Chris Amon at Clermont-Ferrand], and had an accident at Zandvoort due to gear selection problems, but otherwise managed to stay out of trouble. This situation changed rapidly when I joined your team.

"Honestly your cars are so quick that we would still be competitive with a few extra pounds added to make the weakest parts stronger. Please give my suggestion some thought. I can only drive a car in which I have confidence, and feel the point of no confidence is quite near."

Pretty forthright stuff in those days when PR was nowhere in sight, but if Rindt had concerns about his car in general, he was not alone in believing that something had to be done about the way wings were going. Why, even the governing body was giving the matter some thought.

At that time the competition arm of the FIA was the CSI, which duly convened a meeting specifically to discuss the question of wings. The CSI chose the Thursday evening in Monaco - after the first day of practice.

Look at photographs from that event, and you can tell which were taken on the Thursday, for only then did the cars have wings: following its meeting, the CSI announced they were to be banned forthwith. Thus the mechanics set to work - and at eight o'clock the following morning the newly shorn cars took to the track, their drivers not knowing quite what to expect.

Typically, though, they made the best of it. On the Thursday Stewart - with wings - had set the fastest time, and by Saturday afternoon's final session he had improved - without them - by three-tenths of a second. Smoke and mirrors, you might say, but in those days improvisation was a way of life in Formula 1, and they were masters at it.

'Aero', as I said, was primitive back then, with bargeboards, diffusers, T-wings and the like unknown: the mechanics had simply to unbolt the wings, the drivers to adapt.

Given the numbing complexity of aerodynamics in 2017, one somewhat doubts that a similar edict at Suzuka last weekend could have been complied with quite so readily; probably, though, Lewis would still have won.