The standard practice is to have cars not on the lead lap pass the safety (pace) car and circle around to the back of the field before the safety car exits and the race restarts. Doing it by the book would have reached the end of the race before being able to restart. The decision was to have just the cars between the 1st and 2nd place cars pass the safety car and then restart the race with one lap to go. In a vacuum, it sounds like a good idea to not have the championship finish without restarting the race, but in reality, it was a huge advantage for Verstappen because he had newer tires. Of course, if any one of the long string of previous decisions hadn't gone in Hamilton's favor, some very questionably, then this decision wouldn't have even mattered.