I’ll be candid with you all: As a motorsport fan, I find it hard to follow sports car racing. I’ll tune in for the big races, but I struggle to keep up with all the classes, rules, and drivers, no matter how hard I’ve tried to change my ways. But when it comes to actually attending a race, I’ve rarely ever had a better time at the track than when I’m at a sports car race — and attending Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta last weekend really drove that home for me.

Full Disclosure: Michelin flew me out to Petit Le Mans and hosted me at the Chateau Elan for the race weekend, which came with a hell of a lot of exclusive access I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

For as hard as I find it to follow sports car racing, I’ve been to a hell of a lot of IMSA races in my day because I know that they’ll always be incredible. The series brings a very laid-back and fan-friendly atmosphere to the race track that I could just eat up, and it’s something I haven’t found at any other event I’ve been to.

At Petit Le Mans, I was on a Michelin press trip, so I definitely got a much fancier experience than the average fan. I got to interview the Wayne Taylor team in their hauler, chat with IMSA’s president, and get an IMSA-approved golf cart tour of the track and its attractions. I got a tour of the pits, had access to the Paddock Club, peeped in on the Pilot Challenge awards ceremony, and even ate a meal from a chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant. It’s the swankiest experience I’ve ever had at an IMSA race. It was great, no doubt — but my favorite part was everything around it.

I always make an effort to walk around the entire track (or as much of it as I can) when I come to a new circuit, and that’s what I did as soon as I could on Friday. I scoped out the campsites and completely lost my mind at the people that literally pitched a tent and strung hammocks in the woods. I did my merch shopping and acquired a Bibendum stuffed animal from the Michelin tent.

The next day, as the race raged into the night, I made the loop around the track again, this time to meet up with some internet friends along with Brad Perez and Ryan Vargas, both of whom I’ve interviewed but neither of whom I’ve actually met in person. I had a beer with friends at their campsite, and I picked up the warm smell of campfire along the way. I walked back to the paddock and did a nighttime lap, which I finished just in time to watch the ending. I did so from a grandstand that faces the pit lane.

I love going to F1 races or IndyCar events, but there’s a certain peace to a sports car race, especially the longer ones. You have the freedom to make a mid-race jaunt around the track and track down friends you haven’t seen in ages. You can have a conversation over a beer and just feel the cars instead of watching them for a few minutes. You have the time to wander the track, to take in the view from different grandstands and different turns. And you can still have plenty of time to pay attention to the actual race.

I’ve been to the Six Hours of Watkins Glen, and I’ve been to the Rolex 24. I’ve ended up at IMSA races during IndyCar races, and I was a regular attendee of Lone Star Le Mans IMSA/WEC doubleheader at the Circuit of the Americas when that was still a thing.

And at all of those races, whether I was working or not, I felt like I had a chance to discover something new with a childlike sense of wonder. I was able to see what COTA looked like under big Texas skies with prototypes cutting through the night. I spent sweaty hours with friends hollering at drivers and teams I hadn’t previously been invested in. I got to see the way reverent fans build a campsite from scratch for a long weekend of racing. And I’ve seen some damn good racing, whether I fully understood the rules or not.

As a writer with an affinity for motorsport, there’s definitely shame that comes with not fully understanding the ins and outs of every single motorsport series, especially ones that have events like the Rolex 24 or the 24 Hours of Le Mans. There’s no such thing as specialization anymore; I need to have a deep knowledge of everything, so even if I can explain to you the minutiae of every F1 season in the 1970s, I’m still going to be called ignorant by someone for not fully understanding the ever-evolving Balance of Power.

While it’s my goal to learn more about sports car racing, being at Road Atlanta for Petit let me feel that, sometimes, it’s fine not to know it all. It’s fine to have events that you just go to for the sheer pleasure of it, and it’s fine to go to some events only knowing a lot about one very specific thing (in my case at Petit: tires). I’m one person. I can’t do everything. But I can find little moments of joy, and that’s honestly better than most anything else.