If there is a material chance you won’t clear the tower, building an elaborate pad is overkill. I disagree that a new mount means months of delays—SpaceX has been building these faster than legacy operators.
They have these. At their permanent launch sites. This is a test site. That the rocket reached max Q suggests this isn’t a problem needing solving right now.
One usually throttles down around max Q, so it's unclear from outside.
> rest with nozzles dented by rocks at ground escape velocity
Now we're speculating beyond the data. (Actually, we have counterfactual data: it reached max Q. That doesn't happen if you have mis-shaped nozzles causing flow separation.)