To me, the quickest overall car this year was the McLaren. If you look back at this year, McLaren gave up more races than anyone else. Really, McLaren let this championship fall through their hands to be honest. How many races did LH and JB retire out of this year? They just don't have their act together whatsoever it seems. They didn't just lose it because of reliability, they lost it in the pits at the beginning of the season too. Whatever they're doing, they need to step up to the plate and make less mistakes.
The Ferrari/Lotus/Red Bull have probably worked together best as a team. Which is important, but of course the advantage is skewed towards Red Bull because they came on song during that last half of the season.
Having said that, I think Ferrari has made a whole lot less mistakes this year as a whole, but now their car isn't up to par. (So I take that statement back about what I said about Domenacalli earlier...). Yes, Ferrari took it to the line twice now, but they're always missing something, whether it was the car or the team making mistakes...so they need to tighten up loose ends. Using Toyota's wind tunnel should help them greatly for next years car.
Also, I disagree that the RB9 will have a headstart. The McLaren is already strong, and the Ferrari is strong in race pace. And with no rules changes for next year, I think we'll see even tighter racing as the teams only become more and more familiar w/ the cars and the tires.
Here's what I hope...I hope that Pirelli manages to get rid of the marbling issues they have - giving drivers multiple lines into a corner + KERS + DRS = Fantastic racing. Guys, we're in the golden age of racing right now