Not if it was at the time or after initially pressing the shutter. Precapture is not there to get the decisive frame per se, it's a fail safe in case you were too slow
I guess at the end of the day Sony have a business plan and know the market, they've been successful doing what they've been doing so far so who am I to question it? We all want that holy grail but these companies are businesses and so I guess it's in their interest to do as little as possible but make the product desirable enough that it'll still sell well. The only camera I can think of that they threw the kichen sink at it was the A1, I do feel that it was as good as you could do at the time. However, the A1 II seems to go back to the ethos of just doing enough. It does surprise me that it's still only compressed raw at 30fps though.
30fps for 1 second isn't great, but as I said I'd be choosing compressed raw anyway for this type of shooting in which case you get 3 seconds of shooting. I'm not sure why you'd need more than a 3 second burst. With regards to the using 30fps with SD cards, I'm pretty sure I can with the A1, and I would see no reason why not when using the A7V as it will use the buffer, it's only when this is full and writing to the card(s) that it will slow the frame rate. At least that's how I understand it.
I actually think the A7V looks a great camera, and is certainly one of the better updates imo.