This goes back to an over-emphasis on "the quality of the racing" (whatever that means). Road course racing was never much of a spectator sport since you couldn't see much, especially in the early days, compared to oval racing. Was more of a way to picnic. Yet in modern years the fans and race organizers worry themselves over how to see more passes and crashes, because they are perhaps too obsessed with the personality cults of drivers. If the impetus remained as "technicians showing up to post fastest times in order to win a competition, while picnic'ers watch occasionally" there'd be less niggling over the aesthetics of a given race. The ease of making and broadcasting video these days is perhaps partly to blame.
The current regs were aimed at closer following distances, yet, they are trying to emulate some aspect of the past for dubious reasons. If racing was closer in the past, this was by accident, no by design. Cars of certain eras had no wings, but not because of the rulebook.