INDIANAPOLIS — For as long as I’ve been a racing fan, I’ve always been enamoured with the ‘Triple Crown of Motorsports.’The Triple Crown is made up of Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix, the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race, and the Indianapolis 500. Together they are the three most iconic events in all of racing.And after attending my first Indy 500 this past weekend, I can now say that I’ve covered all three Triple Crown events.Comparing them is difficult. All three races are special in their own right, and I’ve adored reporting on them all. But the Indy 500 is going to hold a very special place in memory.It’s not just because of the thrilling finish, the closest in the race’s history after a final-lap shootout, or the feel-good story of new dad Felix Rosenqvist being the winner.It’s because this race really took me back to my racing roots. It rekindled in me the kind of excitement and novelty I felt as a child when my mom would take me to race tracks, or when I got to cover my first races as a reporter.The Indy 500 didn’t just live up to my expectations; it blew them away.F1 has been my main beat for well over a decade now, yet my first Triple Crown race was actually the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2017, working for a specialist website. I’d been four years earlier as a spectator, but to report on it was hugely exciting.That was at the height of the LMP1 era, incredible — and wildly expensive — prototype sports cars that set lap records. It made for some great racing and record-setting laps, with 2017 lodged in my memory after a huge fightback from Porsche to claim its 19th (and to date most recent) Le Mans win despite more than an hour in the garage due to a problem.A car passes under the Dunlop Bridge at sunrise during the 2017 Le Mans 24 Hour race (Dan Istitene / Getty Images)What I loved about Le Mans was the rawness of the event. It was about the smell of the barbecues in the middle of the night and campfires around the track, the fans roaming around the paddock and getting up close with the cars. Everyone bought into traditions steeped in over a century of racing. It bred a community feel on every level, celebrating the joy of the winners and comforting the despair of defeat.My first Monaco came the following year. It was the F1 race I’d always most enjoyed watching on TV as a kid, marveling at how close the cars would get to the barriers, the towering buildings lining the streets, and the yachts in the harbor. The ‘jewel in the crown’ status was something I’d always wanted to experience myself.And I got it. It was very different from Le Mans, of course, given the VIP (and often VVIP)-heavy nature of the event, and there was a chance to go onto a yacht for the first time in my life. But it was what happened on the track that still left me most captivated.