The only reason Max started on softs is because he jacked up qualifying and he was stuck with them. Hamilton was faster, no mater the tire compound he was running, his fastest laps were on the (H) tires and there's no way he would have had any chance on finishing the race on (M). Hamilton was leading the race by almost 12 SECONDS when the crash happened, had that wreck not happen Lewis wins easily.
Max had to make his 1st stop early for (H) because the (S) were beyond done, I think Lewis pitted couple of laps later for (H) tires as well. From there, we had quite possibly some of the best racing between Red Bull & Mercedes and that was thanks to Perez & Hamilton. When that was over, Max was able to close within 2 secs of Lewis but within a few laps, Lewis had checked out on him AGAIN. Mind you, both were Hard Tires at the time.
As for lapped cars being waved by in F1 being normal, well sometimes they do or they don't and this time they did, but what a caveat. When they wave through lapped cars they usually wave them all and allow them to form up for the start, that didn't happen! On lap 57 of 58, they wave through only the cars between P1 & P2 near the closing segment of the pace lap and then the race went green. Remember, the field was behind the safety car for TWO WHOLE LAPS, they could have wave them through immediately, but instead it took massive lobbying from Red Bull to make it happen. Lame.