well, as i´m quite much a hotlapper i think i´ll try to give my opinion.
for me, the reason of hotlapping simply is to show, how fast a given car can go on a given track, without any attempts of cheating or something - and to compare of course :P
on the second part i agree - up to a point. speakin for myself, i know i am not that successfull in races, as i tend to lose concentration and to have a lack of fighting skills :P
but i can absolutely not agree on the part with the pileups at t1.
you maybe cannot imagine that even hotlapping requires some driving skill - believe it or not. such a generalisation is absolutely not justified. hotlapping sometimes doesn´t mean you suddenly do not see any other cars on track
in the real life, there doesn´t even exist a thing like hotlapping.
the effort and costs are just too high for just putting down one or two fast laps i think.