Think this thread is too polarized now, so the best hope is to have move on from this season to next. My thoughts
Season : What.A.Season. I think it was a much needed season with two competitive seasons after a bunch of seasons dominated by Mercedes. It rekindled my interest in the sport from a "read the headlines and find out what happened" to actively tuning in to watch the race. Thanks in no small part to Red Bull, Mercedes teams and two immensely talented and driven drivers. It literally came to the last lap of the last race of the season as a one off winner takes all, and I've never seen anything like it. It was brilliant entertainment and racing. As much as
Mercedes and Redbull : They pulled their socks and made some good decisions for the last few races but I think overall, they would look back on this season where they made a lot of mistakes. In spite of Bottas winning more points than Perez, I think Perez defended Verstappen better than Bottas did Hamilton. There were multiple points in the season where Mercedes as a team trailed Red Bull. Perhaps winning the first title was motivation enough for Red bull. That said, changing engines was a great decision and provided Hamilton a much faster car for the last few races. Personally I think Red Bull car was faster than the Mercedes before the engine change, but don't know how to compute the advantage of a slightly faster car for about 15 races and a much slower car for the final 5 races. All in all, both teams contributed to a great spectacle.
Hamilton : Never understood some of the hate received by Hamilton receives from the fans worldwide. Brilliant and a talented driver. Spoke up against Saudi Arabian atrocities and generally comes across as a nice guy. Likes Senna and that's a plus too. Yes, there is some arrogance but champions do have arrogance. Knighthood is well deserved and his total number of wins and accolades speaks for itself. Personally I feel he is not respected like Schumacher and other legends were but each to his own. He drove beautifully, with controlled aggression and passion this year and handled things impeccably well. I'm not a Lewis Hamilton fan, but take a fecking bow.
Verstappen : Worthy champion. To set the pace with a supremely talented driver like Lewis Hamilton throughout a season is no small achievement and he has driven like a driven man. Some of his aggression bordered on the line but to beat a champion like Hamilton was nerve wrackingly brilliant. His team supported him well, even Perez came up trumps in the most important moments of the season. Perez holding off Hamilton for those precious seconds was some brilliant driving. Without that, Hamilton would have been well outside the lap window and could have pitted for soft tires without giving up position in the final race. He was unlucky in a few races and I think he would have finished the season earlier if he had finished the Baku and Silverstone races but he also got lucky plenty of times and also got the biggest stroke of luck in the final lap of the season. That being said, a worthy champion.
Masi : Even before the fiasco of the last race, I think he should have done his job better. Give more power to the race stewards instead of bartering with the teams to give or take a place. Yes, he is a race director but he's making himself a target for bias complaints. F1 has race stewards to take decisions, let them take it instead of putting his nose everywhere. Also don't understand the complaints of race finishing under a safety car when in the same season we witnessed the farce of Belgian Grand Prix. I do understand the motivation of final lap winner takes all, but the gymnastics made to arrive at that scenario feels made up for entertainment and not as implementing the rulebook. That said, I loved the spectacle myself so I'm a bit unsure how to feel about this. I think in general, he needs to take a back seat a bit.
Bias in this thread : Absolutely nauseating. Perhaps some posters n this thread feel the need to defend Hamilton from the abuse he gets outside but there are some ridiculous posts in this thread. Same can be said of nutter Verstappen fans. Mercedes was never going to take the decision to CAS or FIA, Safety cars has been used since God knows when and the lead is always wiped out, there were questionable decisions for Hamilton as well as Verstappen throughout the season. Some posters only want to bring up the bad ones for Hamilton and the others only want to bring up the points when Verstappen was wronged. Let's move on guys.
Final lap : At the end of the day, questionable decisions were made and none more questionable than letting some of the unlapped cars lap themselves while retaining some. At best, the interpretation was Masi didn't want the race to end with a Safety car and he wanted to lift it to allow one last lap, and realized that he can't let cars lap themselves as they would need an additional lap, so decided go ahead with partial unlap as the best of worst decisions he had to make. At worst, he was compromising race rules for entertainment value. If I was a Hamilton fan, I would think it's more akin to a dubious hand ball penalty given in the last minute of the UCL finals. I enjoyed the race and the spectable but I can understand the bitterness of Mercedes / Hamilton fans.
Cheers to both teams, Hamilton and Verstappen for giving us the best F1 season in ages. Hope Hamilton comes back and absolutely mullers Red Bull next season. All I want for Christmas is one more season like this one