This is the final part of an 8-part series. Part 7 is here. Click here to read Part 1.

There is a quote from the 1950s that is often misattributed to Ernest Hemingway (and Google says it’s either Barnaby Conrad or Ken Purdy who came up with it): “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”

(Pexels / Alex Urezkov)

Discovering the hidden depth of Formula 1 in 2014 made me want to venture a little further, but just diving into a new sport or hobby can easily backfire. I haven’t been able to stick with soccer just yet, for instance. It’s crushing if something doesn’t live up to our expectations. F1 requires a lot of patience. But when it’s good, boy is it good. I believe I came into it at the perfect time.

I had the movie Rush sitting on my PVR forever, and watching that streamer play Forza Motorsport 5 gave me the push I needed to sit down and finally press play. Rush was not so concerned with rules and the procedure of F1. It was about drama and danger—a rockstar version of the sport in the ‘70s. It emphasized the fact that drivers stared down death every time they fired up their engines but that just made it all the more thrilling, all the more sexy. Drivers went to swanky parties in Italian mansions and hung out with supermodels and smoked cigarettes (nowadays drivers train like Olympic athletes… but they still hang out with supermodels in mansions).

Rush tells the real-life story of the brief but intense rivalry between drivers James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl). While dramatized—they didn’t hate each other that much in real life—it captures the heat of elite competition and why some men are willing to risk their lives to be number one.

I decided to watch F1 seriously soon after. The first race I watched was the 2014 Belgium GP. Watching the lights go out and the cars fly up the iconic incline (two corners which I know now are called Eau Rouge and Raidillon) for the first time is one of those seminal moments for me. No other race start since has captured that same awe that I felt.

But this race would also introduce me to Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, drivers for the Mercedes team. They were both in close contention for the championship at this point in the year, and Hamilton would be forced to retire (from the race) after a collision with Rosberg damaged his car. He radioed in bitterly: “Nico hit me.” Rosberg called it a racing incident.

What followed was two and half years of hard-fought racing and frosty, passive-aggressive cool-down rooms between the two (who usually came in first and second places), shoving each other off tracks, and even crashes that took both of them out of races. What’s so compelling is that there are photos of them from before, as children, go-karting competitively together. They were something like friends for a long time. Then collectively, we got to watch their relationship deteriorate in real time every race weekend. It was a little sad. This wasn’t wrestling, none of it was scripted. It was pure drama.

But it made me fall in love with a sport for the first time in my life.