Formula 1's latest three-car title decider was a fair bit less dramatic than its famous 2007 counterpart - or the four-car 2010 showdown - but it couldn't help but be tense, even if points leader Lando Norris ultimately drove the exact race he needed to to ensure triumph.
But was it a good finale, and how does Norris's title-clinching campaign compare now that it's over and his mission has been accomplished?
Here's what our crew made of it.
A worthy champion
Samarth Kanal
There have been question marks about Norris's racecraft and mentality over the season, but he did everything right today.
He didn't risk much in the Oscar Piastri overtake and then responded to Charles Leclerc's laptimes and pitstops whenever he had to.
When he came across Yuki Tsunoda, there really wasn't anything more Norris could have done. He picked exactly the right place to pass Tsunoda as anywhere else on the track would have introduced more jeopardy, and held his nerve when Tsunoda took it too far.
Norris had the most difficult team-mate and inter-team dynamic on the grid in Piastri, and in Verstappen he had the hardest rival anyone could get: a four-time champion driving at his very best.
It takes steel and strength to make it to F1; it takes indescribable qualities to win the title, however it may be secured.
Norris is a worthy champion.
Tsunoda's antics went too far
Jack Benyon
What on earth was Tsunoda doing?
Any sympathy for his rise and fall at Red Bull has evaporated. Not sure what was worse - his worming across the track like a snake or the fact he couldn’t believe he had a penalty.
Poor judgement on his behalf, and even if he was egged on to be a villain by his team, he took the safety of both drivers into his hands and deserved a harsher penalty.
Elsewhere, Max Verstappen was the best driver over the season for me, but Norris overcame a team that made his life more difficult than a typical ‘number one-led’ team would have done.
Oscar Piastri looked unassailable by Zandvoort and Norris’s sometimes poor first half of the year showed. But the way he’s turned it around makes him a worthy, worthy champion.
Surprised Verstappen didn't do more
Scott Mitchell-Malm
Norris dealt with the surprisingly minor complications of this race very well and while not the best driver of 2025 is a deserving world champion.
I don't know why Verstappen didn't do anything more to try to impact the outcome here, though - it wouldn't have been nefarious, it would have been completely justified. Perhaps the shape of the race just made it not worth the risk to him. Piastri was right there instead of Norris so if Max did back the pack up, he'd have been vulnerable to a move from a driver with less to lose.
He may explain it well shortly. I wouldn't be surprised if he just didn't care enough to overcomplicate it – not in a dismissive way, just...what would it prove?
Verstappen has been outstanding this season. He'll take plenty of credit as the best driver on the grid and he will take a lot of satisfaction for his comeback and how close he got.
Plus, on the weekend it mattered most, he was the best driver once again. Maybe he just wanted to go out emphatically in that way.
Great that they kept it clean
Gary Anderson
It wasn’t the best race of the season - but in reality everyone fighting for the title did the best they could and happily it wasn’t an end result that was affected by FIA decisions (unless you count the Tsunoda decision). And the 20 cars finishing just shows how reliable these cars and power units have become.
No fireworks in the first corner showed how professional these top three are and that whoever was going to win the championship was going to do it with performance as opposed to bumper cars - so well done for that, it hasn’t always been like that.
Norris winning by just two points just shows how valuable those earlier-season points that were thrown away by all of them could have been.
For McLaren, winning both the constructors' and drivers' titles in the same season is also a serious achievement that not many teams have achieved - so well done to each and every one of the people behind that.
It's OK the champion isn't the driver of the year
Josh Suttill
Has this been the greatest title-winning season of all time? Absolutely not.
But you cannot fault Norris for two things in particular.
Number one, the way he picked himself up after a bruising first half of the season, where everyone was questioning whether Piastri had displaced him as McLaren's spearhead and then the Zandvoort DNF gave him a mighty deficit.
And number two, the way he controlled things beautifully in Abu Dhabi. He didn't put a foot wrong and didn't lose his head when it would have been so easy to when Leclerc was all over his McLaren in the early stages of the race.
Just because Norris isn't the driver of the season doesn't mean he isn't a worthy champion. When the bar is Max Verstappen, it's OK to not be quite as good as him. Norris found another level when it mattered during the Austin-Mexico-Brazil triple-header, and it's really that uptick that made him champion.
Glad Verstappen didn't make Norris's life harder
Matt Beer
Plenty of people seem to be wondering why Verstappen and Red Bull didn't do more to make life messy for Norris in the decider.
As much as I really do love a bit of that kind of mischief (Jorge Lorenzo in the 2013 MotoGP decider even better than Lewis Hamilton's 2016 F1 efforts in my book), I'm really glad Verstappen took the 'just dominate and see what happens behind me' approach. Given how much his racecraft ethics used to be questioned (often with justification), I'm delighted that today there was nothing to give his critics any fresh ammunition and he just got on with driving faster than everyone else - as he has for so much of the second half of the year.
Norris did an efficient and impressive job in the finale, but he really should've been far more than two points ahead of Verstappen in the final standings given their respective machinery. Which doesn't make him an undeserving champion, and I can see him winning titles with far greater margins in the future now he's got a first one under his belt.
I did hope Tsunoda might end his Red Bull stint on a relative high by doing some clean but effective rear-gunner work in this race but his indecisive-at-best wandering around the straight when Norris appeared behind him was far from the calibre of Sergio 'Checo the legend' Perez's work for Verstappen in Abu Dhabi four years ago.
No asterisks on titles
Glenn Freeman
As I often say on our Bring Back V10s classic F1 podcast (usually in defence of Jacques Villeneuve's 1997 title), there's no room for small print on the world championship trophy. Verstappen drove phenomenally this year, and it was a remarkable achievement to split the McLaren drivers and finish just two points adrift of Norris in the end. But sport would be boring if the guy who was deemed the best at the start of the competition was guaranteed to win every single time. And it's always been the way in F1 that there's far more to it.
Verstappen not bagging a fifth title this year doesn't impact his standing in F1, just like it didn't hurt the legacies of fellow greats like Ayrton Senna or Michael Schumacher when someone else with a better car won the title while they were on the grid.
And Norris wasn't handed it on a plate. He found another gear after the Zandvoort failure and went on a great run of form just as Piastri stumbled. He had to make it happen.
Norris gets to call himself a world champion forever. A few "yeah, buts" from smartarses on social media don't matter when you get your hands on that iconic F1 trophy.
