Ron Howard movies are always well crafted, usually enjoyable and sometimes a little old fashioned. But they’re rarely ‘flashy’. He’s not a director who garners the attention that say a Scorsese, Tarantino, or Fincher might generate. In other words, he’s a Lauda, not a Hunt. And in 2013 he quietly went about making one of the best Formula 1 movies of the last 50 years. Not since 1966’s Grand Prix has Hollywood better captured the sport’s unique combination of glamour, danger and fierce competition between men who live to drive.

Rush is very much a Hollywood movie. It’s driven by plot and nothing’s going to slow it down. Facts are welcome but not essential. Details useful, but adjustable if inconvenient. This is a film that wants to strap you into the passenger seat, take the corners at 150mph and then drop you off too exhilarated to ask “Hang on, did it really happen like that?”

It helps of course that it’s based on one of the most fascinating rivalries in racing history, between two of the sport’s most compelling drivers, James Hunt and Niki Lauda, and largely focuses on the 1976 season, arguably the most dramatic in the history of F1. A season that featured disputes, disqualifications, plenty of team politics and Lauda suffering horrific life-changing burns and injuries after crashing at the Nürburgring, only to return to the track six weeks later, where he was eventually pipped to the world championship by Hunt in the final race… by one point.