It was May 14 when high wings were reined in by the FIA...
May 3 Leo was in Japan, but the speed of the circuit there appears to have favoured a non-winged car. At the Farm on the same weekend - May 4, the same weekend as the Spanish GP where the crashes which led to the wing bans - Niel Allen ran bi-winged. But at Oran Park on June 29 none of those leading cars had wings apart from Allen with triangular front tabs and a 'tea tray' on the back of the M4A.
Everyone, it can be seen, was in a state of flux with wings. I would suggest they were having problems getting them made and fitted. So two weeks later at the Farm we saw KB with small wings both ends, Leo with the front wings only and Max with none. Leo's high wing was so big it would have needed significant reconstruction to be used under the new rules, which possibly hadn't been finalised anyway. Leo did run the original high wing mounted in a lower position, but it was too wide for the new rules.
Bear in mind, too, that this was still in the era during which comparison runs were done to see if it was quicker to race without wings, Even up to Monza in 1970 this was still true in F1.
But I don't think it was by choice, at all, that Leo didn't have a rear wing at that meeting. He had a spin coming to the Causeway, too.
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Edited by Ray Bell, 25 November 2018 - 16:43.