IT’S IN THE FIFTH MOVIE OF THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS FRANCHISE when it finally happens: Dominic Toretto, the center point of the Fast universe and also an unbeatable force, finally loses a race. It happens during a four-person showdown between him and three people in his crew (Brian, his second-in-command; Han, an as-cool-as-they-come social chameleon; and Roman, a loveable loudmouth). They each put up a million dollars, and then race a quarter mile for it, winner-take-all. And it seems for a bit like everyone has a chance to win—they all toggle positions for most of the race, and then end up even for the final stretch of it—but really only two of them actually do, because the franchise has, for the bulk of it anyway, always been about two of them: Dom and Brian.

Dom outmaneuvers Brian to take a late lead, but makes what appears to be a critical mistake when he eases off the throttle a little too early. Brian takes advantage, pulling ahead just as they cross the finish line, winning the race. And seeing as how he’s been trying to best Dom in a street race for nearly a decade, he screams in celebration, proud to have finally gotten his win over Dom. Except here’s the thing: It wasn’t a win. Dom didn’t lose the race; he threw it; he lost on purpose. He did so because his sister (and Brian’s wife) had just told everyone that she was pregnant and he wanted her to have the extra $3 million.

Dominic Toretto is not the overall best driver in the Fast universe (that’d be Letty¹). He’s not even the most precise driver in the Fast universe (that’d be Brian²). But he is the most fearless, and the most intuitive, which makes him the most successful.³ He’s also, as it turns out, the sweetest.

Dominic Toretto has never lost a race in a Fast movie that he wanted to win.⁴ His legitimate movie racing record is as such:

He races three other people early in The Fast and the Furious (this is the first time he races against Brian). He beats them all.⁵ He races Brian at the end of The Fast and the Furious. He beats him. He races several people in Fast & Furious. (They do so because they’re all trying to win a spot on a transport team for a powerful drug dealer.) Brian is in that race, too. Dom wins.⁶ He races a guy in Brazil for his car in Fast Five. This one happens offscreen, but we know he wins because he and Brian come home with the guy’s car. He races Letty in Fast and Furious 6. (She has amnesia so she doesn’t know that she’s married to him.) He wins. He races the guy from The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift in Tokyo in Furious 7. This one also happens offscreen, but we know he wins because the guy says so while they talk afterward. And he races a guy in Cuba in Fate of the Furious. The car he uses is a clunker (so much so that the engine catches fire while he races, forcing him to finish the race while driving backward so as to avoid the flames from getting blown in his face). He still manages to win.

That’s seven straight-up races for Dom, and seven straight-up wins for Dom. But Dom is a winner in nearly all categories of his Fast existence, not just racing. We should go over them, but first let’s do the losses.

Here are Dominic Toretto’s most substantial losses: When he does not sniff out that Brian is a cop in The Fast and the Furious; when he decides to try and pull off the last job in The Fast and the Furious without Jesse, an integral part of their team; when Vince is dangling off the truck at the end of The Fast and the Furious and Dom is unable to rescue him; when he sneaks out in the middle of the night in Fast & Furious and leaves Letty alone and she ends up dying later;⁷ when he’s unable to sniff out that Braga is Braga the first time they meet in Fast & Furious; when he gets sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison at the end of Fast & Furious; when Vince dies in Fast Five;⁸ when Owen Shaw outsmarts him and kidnaps Mia in Fast and Furious 6;⁹ when Giselle dies in Fast and Furious 6;¹⁰ when he tries to run up on Deckard Shaw in the abandoned factory in Furious 7; and when Cipher kills Elena in front of him in Fate of the Furious. And I know that seems like a lot, but that’s only ten losses in nearly two decades of a truly high stakes existence. The New York Knicks have probably lost ten times in the time it’s taken you to read this paragraph.

Not including the races I mentioned early, here are some (but not all) of Dominic Toretto’s most substantial wins, and I’m going to write them out as a numbered list because there are too many to do it in paragraph form like I did the losses:

1. When he successfully orchestrates the robbery of another 18-wheeler at the beginning of The Fast and the Furious. Here’s how much Dominic Toretto loves racing: One of the law enforcement higher-ups mentions that Dom and his team have already stolen over $6 million in stuff. Even if they were selling it at half that, that’s still $3 million they were splitting up between six people. So Dom had made, at minimum, $500,000 over a few months and still felt compelled to participate in drag races that he was risking his life in just to win $6,000.

2. When he delivers the “Ask any real racer” monologue. In hindsight, this should’ve been the scene when everyone realized that we were looking at a potentially massive movie franchise.¹¹ Vin Diesel, an oddly charming and sincere lug, is legitimately perfect for these few minutes.

3. When he outruns the cops in The Fast and the Furious.

4. When he delivers the “I live my life a quarter mile at a time” monologue. Vin Diesel is a decent actor, except for when he’s allowed to emote around a car, at which point he becomes a transcendent talent.

5. When he kicks the shit out of Johnny Tran when Johnny Tran calls him a narc. “I never narc’d on nobody!”

6. When he smashes his car into the side of the gas tanker to rescue Letty in Fast & Furious. I don’t want you to think that what I’m about to write is a joke, so I’m going to do in an entirely different font so that you know how serious I am being: Dom and Letty are an elite movie couple, and the one couple I would trust above all others to find their way back to each other no matter the circumstances. They’re better than Vivian and Edward in Pretty Woman, and they’re better than Baby and Johnny in Dirty Dancing, and they’re better than Rose and Jack in Titanic, and they’re better than Nina and Darius in Love Jones, and they’re better than Allie and Noah in The Notebook, and they’re better than Sally and Harry in When Harry Met Sally, and they’re better than Akeem and Lisa in Coming to America, and they’re better than Mia and Sebastian in La La Land, and they’re better than Westley and Buttercup in The Princess Bride, and they’re better than Anna and William in Notting Hill. Pick whatever movie couple you want. Dom and Letty are better than them. And if you’re like, “There’s no way that Dom and Letty are better than, oh, I don’t know, Romeo and Juliet in any of the Romeo and Juliet movies,” let me ask you this: “Could Romeo have cannonballed himself across a giant gap between two bridges and caught Juliet mid-air as she tumbled through the sky toward her death?”¹² No. The answer is no. Romeo could not have done that. That idiot couldn’t even not kill himself.

7. When he perfectly times driving under a flipping-and-on-fire gas tanker in Fast & Furious. The most underappreciated stunt in the Fast catalog.

8. When he interrogates the one guy in Fast & Furious and forces him to give him answers by holding a car engine over his head.

9. When he interrogates the other guy in Fast & Furious and forces him to give him answers by dangling him out of a building window. Dominic Toretto is fucking good at interrogating people.

10. When he fights a bunch of bad guys after exploding his own car in Fast & Furious. This was really the movie where the filmmakers were like, “You know what, let’s just make Dom a bald Superman,” and at no point is that more obvious than when Dom gets shot in the back at close range and doesn’t even wince.