Agree. We ideally never want to allow huge speed differentials where possible, and this was possible to avoid. In quali it is different. This was on the start finish with a race still live. We've seen penalties for a lot less. What was the one where someone stopped in the wrong place to do a practise start? Similar thing. I dunno. The stewards are consistently inconsistent really.
I also agree about the discussion on Merc's lack of performance. It's a bit of a shame really. F1 is so conflicting in what it wants to be. You know you've done a great job when regs change to try to hamper your progress. Unfortunately it has always been this way. It's meant to be the top end design and technical race discipline on the planet, but at the same time it has things like ERS/DRS, high deg tyres, mandatory pit stops, no re-fueling, now slow pit stops.... all in attempt to try to make it more exciting and close, i.e. artificial things. We've seen over the years off the top of my head things like, infinite gears, Williams' amazing suspension, the car that had the big fan underneath to suck it to the ground, Brawn GPs amazing air defuser to suck the car down and all these inovations that gave huge advantages. It seems a bit of a lottery as to who interprets and exploits the rules best and is allowed to run these advantages the longest.
The rule changes to Nerf the Merc though are a bit lame. That's not progress really. It's interference because other teams just couldn't catch up. Like a reset as said. It's not really one single thing, it's a series of changes which completely upset the balance of their car design. It's a perfect storm. Redbull deserve some credit, but it's more that Merc have lost so much.
I wonder what would have happened if Lewis got into turn 1 first and whether Max would have been able to stay with him in the dirty air. I suspect he still would have. The close races we wanted between them doesn't really seem like it will be a thing if Max keeps getting poles. He will cruise to victory each race I feel.