Second race in a row it's not the on track action that makes things exciting, but exciting it was!
Heroes
Max Verstappen. Yes, he needed a lot of luck to get the win/championship, but he spent the whole season building to a place where he could take a lucky win. He raced well and took the opportunities. He got a bad start, and I believe that was due to nerves. I think most of the race he was driving with nerves.
Sergio Perez. We've seen teammates take bad pit strategies to force the opponent's hand. We've seen teammates put pressure on pursuing cars to keep them focused on holding station instead of getting ahead. We've seen teammates make strong qualifying/starts to hold an opponent off the back of their teammate. Rarely have see seen a teammate in the lead hold up second place 5 whole seconds in a single lap. Bottas made the perfect teammate start in Jeddah, and Perez responded with the perfect teammate 'interference' lap. He even quit the race to reduce the change of more safety cars. I've never seen a teammate take the roll that seriously.
Lewis Hamilton. It was a championship drive. He was head and shoulders above the competition and his teammate. He kept his distance from Max's shenanigans. He was careful with Perez. He took care of his tires AND put in 'quali laps' when he needed to. The racing gods just didn't want to see him win today.
Sainz. Oh... wait, there's drivers who weren't Lewis/Max? Sainz got third. I guess he drove well, never saw.
Tsunoda. If you watched only the first and last race of the season, he'd seem like a beast. Too bad about the other 20. I'm glad he's got another chance next year. I think he's got the skills, just needs to get the... whatever it was that held him back this year... sorted out.
Red Bull. They had to take chances to win, and made the right call every single time. You've got to be lucky to be good, but good to be lucky.
Zeroes.
Bottas. Perez was teammate of the century. Hamilton needed Bottas up far enough to mess with Max's pit strategy, but he was nowhere to be found. Bottas is a solid racer, I hate to put him as a zero, but he wasn't the factor that Mercedes needed.
Kimi. Deserved a better last race.
Gio. Deserved a better last race.
Masi/FIA. I don't think this race was handled especially poorly, but an entire season of unpredictable decisions left this last race feeling unnecessarily unpredictable. Bottom line, everyone was safe, so from that point of view, the right calls were made.