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It'll definitely be interesting to see how Mercedes approach next season; evolution of current design vs "revolution" of larger sidepods a la the rest of the grid. Still like that they went completely their own direction even if it didn't pay off.
Also be interesting to see if the aero development cap Red Bull have for championship placement and spend cap punishments has a meaningful effect on them as the season / development progresses next year. They're already a fair way ahead so maybe it will just make the margin smaller.
Overall, despite Red Bulls dominance at the top, this has been an exiting season in comparison to many of the hybrid era.
Looking forward to March already.
Soul
I think Merc struggled this year on a number of things.
First, they chose the wrong aero package. They went for the size-zero sidepods which worked well with the previous aero regulations, but the current aero appears to work much better with a massive undercut like the Red Bull has. The Red Bull cars already relied very heavily on their floors for downforce, so it doesn't surprise me that it wasn't too much of a transition for them to the new regulations. Mercedes always relied less on the floor and much more on wing and I think they struggled with the transition.
Second I think might have been budgetary. Merc had to make much, much bigger sacrifices internally to meet the new budget cut than any of the other teams. When I worked at RB, the rumours were that Merc were putting £7-800M per year into the race cars and that didn't include the engines. That was almost double what we were spending. They had to decide what areas of the team to cut and I just wonder if they made the right calls. You could see at times they were splicing patches of modifications into their cars where they would previously have brought new parts, especially on the floors and wings, which points to cutting costs. The result of that are parts which are heavier and which don't perform as well.
I'm certain they know what they did wrong and I have no doubt they'll be back fighting next year.