He tried an aggressive move, lol, you can see in the replay the only point he is alongside Hamilton properly is because he broke later than Hamilton into the corner, at that point Hamilton was braking and turning as tight as he could, he can't magically turn tighter than physics allows because Maldonado wants him to. He seems to forget he was taking the normal racing line which allows a tighter turn and Hamilton was on the inside, he could avoid that, Hamilton couldn't.
As for if Hamilton should have given it up, its as I said earlier, IF Maldonado had the move he'd have conceded, you don't EVER give up till he has the move, and he didn't.
Again I'll point out Monaco last year, Schumi, Hamilton had him had the inside line was just ahead and Schumi could have turned in and hit Hamilton but sensibly conceded the place. Hamilton had the stronger position before the turn, it was game over. He did the same thing to Maldonado at that race, Maldoanado decided he didn't like it and turned into Hamilton causing a crash on purpose. There are drivers who know when the move is done and concede it safely only contesting it to the safe point, and there are drivers that just say "its mine I want it I'm not pulling out I'll make contact, who cares". Maldonado has shown he is one of those unsafe drivers and frankly should be forced to miss a race or two as he's done stuff repeatedly. Also factor in where it is in the race, this wasn't 10 laps from the end, Hamilton only had to make it slightly harder for a lap and he gets second, that isn't something you give up easily, if/when he's ahead and has the lead into a corner I have literally no doubt Hamilton would give it up, he did it twice already in this very race and in many others. Make it hard to pass till the other guy has the advantage into the next corner, then you concede, at no time did Maldanado have the advantage. He went in late and fast into that corner and was frankly always going off.
As for being on pace, you can't really tell. He won a race, one race, and that is almost all of his points in one race, is this his third points finish and that was only because of basically multiple people going out. He isn't competitive in this title, give Kobe a win out of no where on a freak track when everyone else has problems and boom, he'd be right with Maldanado. The odd freak result will put people around the 20-30 point mark, doesn't mean anything(yet).
