Heroes:
Max Vertappen's brake failure. I know, celebrating someone's failure is poor taste, but it added some much needed interest to the 2024 season.
Carlos Sainz. There are a LOT of skills involved in being a top F1 driver, and responding to adversity is a big one. Sainz has been cast aside by a team he's driven well for. Knowing his future is in his hands, he has stepped up. AND THEN he has an appendectomy, and comes back to win his next race! There is no one more dialed into driving F1 right now. Most drivers would hate to have this sort of adversity, but it seems like it's just what Sainz needed.
Charles LeClerc. Second place in the second best car. Well done Charles
McLaren. They've put together a great team. It's no mistake other teams are trying to copy their success. I think the other teams forget this was a LONG haul to get McLaren from their bottom of the barrel days to their modern pretty good-ness. Norris and Piastri are talented drivers, getting good results from their good cars.
Alex Albon. Finishing 11th in your teammate's car might not feel heroic, but finishing 11th in a car developed by a team that honestly isn't being run as an F1 team (which they're working on), that isn't your own car, that the entire time your number one thought is 'don't crash' is quite impressive. I think with the gloves off, Albon could have done better, but bringing that car home while fighting with Haas' reckless driving is an accomplishment.
Haas. Double points finish? I certainly didn't expect that. I'm not a fan of the drivers, they're still reckless, but they got the job done.
Tsunoda. VCARB has been a mess so far this year, but solid points is what he needed, and what he got.
Zeroes
Perez. Is RBR genuinely struggling? Or is Perez just not up to snuff any more?
Stake. Of all the millions of dollars of engineering talented involved in F1, getting wheel nuts catastrophically wrong seems so very weird.
Mercedes. The salary cap was meant to stop a team from dominating. Job done I guess. As a Hamilton fan girl it's frustrating to see things go from bad to worse from him. I'd like to think the team is letting him down, but maybe he really has slipped.
Other thoughts:
Some very visual elements to the race. Verstappen's brakes exploding in the pit entrance, Russel's car coming to rest like it was folded in half. I've never seen anything quite like either of those in my 30 years of watching F1
I think the F1 drivers as a whole are trying to get away with more and more dangerous moves. The cars are safe, so no one is (likely) to get killed by a brake test, or a double move, but the sport itself suffers when cars attempting a pass have to think about their safety instead of their pass.