From somewhere – actually, the cars that had competed over the winter in the Tasman Series down under – two more 49Bs were found for Monaco and with Rindt still on the sick list, Richard Attwood who’d come second and set the fastest lap here the previous year, was drafted onto the strength as Hill’s team-mate.
So here is the first point of significance of the 1969 race: it was the event where wings on stilts were banned for good. Oddly enough having practised with them on Thursday before they were outlawed, the cars actually ended up going quicker withouts. This was a time of immense change in F1, not just aerodynamically but also in tyre technology and lap times were tumbling, Jackie Stewart claiming the pole in 1min 24.6sec, a barely believable 3.6sec faster than Hill’s pole time from the previous year. And if you think that was just JYS doing his thing, consider that three quarters of the cars on the grid beat the previous year’s pole time.
Where was Hill? Back in fourth place, the quickest Lotus but that was only to be expected as Jo Siffert’s was a private entry and Attwood had never raced a 49B before. Hill was of course the reigning World Champion but so too was he in his twelfth season in Formula 1, had celebrated his 40th birthday earlier that year and of all the drivers on the grid only Jack Brabham was older. The chances of adding to his unrivalled tally of four Monaco GP victories seemed implausible at least.
Soon after the start it appeared nearer impossible. Jackie streaked off into an unassailable lead, pursued in vain by Chris Amon’s Ferrari with Hill third. Within a very short period of time, Stewart was so far ahead he was signalled to adopt cruise and collect mode.
But back then Monaco with its thousand gearchanges, transmission-busting bumps and merciless barriers was often a war of attrition, and so it proved this time. John Surtees’s gearbox blew causing him to collide with Brabham, Pedro Rodriguez’s engine packed up, Jackie Oliver hit a wall, Amon lost his differential, while Silvio Moser, Jean-Pierre Beltoise and, yes, Jackie Stewart, all succumbed to universal joint failure, and all of this by lap 22 out of 80. That meant that for almost three quarters of the race, just eight cars remained, reducing to seven when the rear suspension of Ickx’s Brabham quit at half distance. And Graham Hill was leading.