Yeah, he also won in 2008 and 2014 because of DNFs and damage out of Massa's and Rosberg's control. But we're talking about who the quicker driver has been this year and it's blatantly Verstappen.
Pirelli issued new protocols following it. They were well within safe data ranges when it happened.
The FIA thought it was a penalty, the penalty just didn't fit what had happened. 10 second penalty or a drive through would have pushed him to second, he took out the race leader, 5 seconds is ridiculously soft.
The FIA have a lot of work to do in the off season regarding penalties. They've very much gone for an approach where they're seen to be doing something but have a minimal, and in most cases hopefully no effect on proceedings. They're regularly bullied by Merc and RB into investigating things that don't need to be, and they were nearly begging RB to accept penalties yesterday. On track incidents should be non-negotiable, illegalities/cheating with car design like Sao Paolo should be the only things opposition teams can bring to the attention of the stewards. As a bit of a tangent, what the hell was that radio message yesterday when Hamilton pushed Max off the track and they said something along the lines of "that should have been a black and white flag, take this as a warning", like how spineless can you get?
You're correct, Middle more so than start is where Hamilton was off the boil, it started in Baku where he threw 25 points away. Had he not shunted Verstappen off or Bottas didn't do the same for him he'd have given up an insurmountable lead by the Dutch GP. Like if one of those three things didn't happen, two of which were literally Merc's doing, Verstappen only would need a top 4 next week.
Edit: Not sure what's happened here but I seem to have broken the thread somehow on my browser?