I think if a vaccine manufacturer had a choice of testing at 3 weeks or 12 weeks gap between doses, given the emergency they were always likely to test the shorter one first. However, lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, and as I've said before we are not designing vaccines in a vacuum. There is lots of data from other vaccines that give us an idea how things *should* work, all being well.
And in this case, not only does prior experience suggest the Oxford vaccine *should* work well with a longer gap between doses, there is now direct evidence that it *does* - and that it may in fact work better. The BBC has now written up a story based on that Lancet pre-press paper:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55910964
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Prof Stephen Evans, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "The data definitely provide some evidence to suggest that the eventual protection from two doses of this vaccine are not worsened by having a longer than 28 or 42 day period between doses and tend to confirm what had been shown before, that if anything the eventual efficacy was better."
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