I’m not really sure if I can convey my thought process in English but I’ll try.
The cars still all have to travel back to the pit lane
That is true. However you could see that some cars struggled to clear the stationed Mercedes and had to take to the grass. There was a bunch of debris on either side of the Mercedes.
After a red flag the other drivers could take their time to find the safest way around the Mercedes, or if necessary stop the car entirely. That’s not really possible during a VSC because the race is technically still going on. Or to put it another way: during a VSC the drivers only slow down as much as they have to. But they don’t want to slow more than necessary. Let’s say the driver in front of you has a time penalty that will be applied after the race. During a VSC you’ll scramble by the stopped car as fast as possible to not lose more time. It’s potentially unsafe.
Lookup how vsc works again. No passing allowed. No racing allowed. Cars must reduce speed and prepare to stop. Cars must maintain deltas.
Once the vsc came out the race results were frozen.
The only difference a red flag would have made is that Russell would have kept his #7 spot in the results.
