Best car to grind The Marathon?

Hey everyone.

I am currently trying to reach level 20 Street Scene, so I am grinding The Marathon, i.e. the final race for Street Scene.

Since it’s winter, I am using the Hoonigan Gymkhana Focus, because it handles like a dream, can get high skill chains, and it’s a low S2 car meaning AI will not get crazy.

Once winter is done, what are some good perks to have for a car to farm The Marathon? As far as I know, there is no perk that gives +20% influence for street scene for 10 races, so I am not sure what is the combination of perks that would give the most influence.

Any thoughts?

Does Max have a perks/influence spreadsheet yet? Can we help you in anyway @manteomax?

I can’t wait to see the answers to this thread. I’m thinking along same lines for the other series.

For the Road racing series I have found the Lotus Elise GT1 barn find to be one of the best - it has a flat +30% influence perk, compared to +15% on most other cars, and on top of that it also has the +20% for 10 road races. Doesn’t bank as many skill points, but on 3 laps of The Goliath I have been getting approximately 95k influence. With a Vulcan FE or Zonda R FE I was getting low 80ks

I’ve not made it to Goliath yet. Still working my way towards it.
I’m using bond jag c-x75 and getting 11-14k influence on colossus. Depending on how much skill I get. With full perked out car and 200% campaign race bonus

I’ll give the lotus ago and compare

Thankfully, my grinding days on the Marathon are behind me, reached level 17, collected the Hoonigan 911 Turbo, and called it a day. I used the Subaru WRX 22B just cause I dig the car. I typically earned around 17K influence points per run, by following a specific strategy. Lower the difficulty level a few steps below your normal preference, start the race slowly, let the whole field past, and then concentrate on earning skills as you work your way to the front. Once in front, points opportunities are minimal, so once again, pull over and allow the field past, and then run to the front again. With the A800 Subaru and Above Average drivatars, I could do this 3 times per lap and still win comfortably.

I am very much looking forward to running the Marathon circuit over the coming seasons, I find it a more interesting and challenging track than the Goliath. However, it seems to me like T10/PG somehow got the Marathon and the Colossus events mixed up. The road racing series (circuit races and point to point) culminates with a point-to-point race, and the street scene series (point to point only) culminates with a point-to-point race that is really just a single lap of a closed circuit. Feels like this should have been reversed.

Speaking of the grind, has anyone found a way to blueprint the Marathon? I would really like to be able to set-up a multi-lap event. (I fear the answer is yes, after I reach level 20 Street Scene, in which case back to the grind. If not, I will likely make that my first new route, once the Route Creator becomes available.

^^^This. Why can’t I Blueprint this track. It just automatically defaults to whatever car I’m driving, one lap, in the winter.

I had an Alfa Romero FE that had event skill, and then just ran with it maxxed out in perks. Goliath isnt Street Scene though, but i think its the Road Racing lvl 20 track. Street Scene doesnt unlock anything useful other than a catch phrase and wheelspins after the Hoonigan. Had I known about the Elise, I would have used that…and now I will especially since I’m doing the road races next. Currently using the Lambo Revention FE for it.

I use 1988 M5 FE. This car has “Event Influence” bonus. It gives around 21,000 Influence on The Marathon for each win. My build is A800 but I think you can easily push the car to S1900 and grind it faster if you use the V10 engine.

There is a story reason for that. Street racing at the Festival is supposed to be a secret. When racing The Marathon, one of the first things you do is run flat out down the straight in the middle of the Festival, thus “revealing the secret”.

Road Racing series has Goliath as its pinnacle so Colossus is a nice counterpart to it.

I can confirm that probably the best cars to grind The Marathon (and possibly The Goliath aswell) are cars with Event Influence boost (Alfa Romeo Quadrofoglio, BMW M5, etc.).

I used a GTR Nismo LM (the one you get from the car perk) and on The Goliath I got 105k influence for 3 laps. My absolute BEST attempts at the Goliath was with a Vulcan FE, and I got around 92k influence for 3 laps. So for my skill level and abilities, I got a 13k boost. That’s half a level, definitely not insignificant. If you are better than me (and chances are, you are) you can probably see an even bigger benefit.

Hope this helps. I for one know that I’ll be using the FE Event influence from now on. (like others have already mentioned)

I’m enjoying this topic. I’m not sure how the points work in this game, or what i should be working on. I did some marathon grinding with the lotus elise , comparing points levels with ai difficulty. The perks tree is something I’m Interested in figuring out. Does the FE cars beat the perks boosts all the time ? I use the skill perks car for most of my general driving and skill point driving. I’m halfway to my last castle purchase them I’ll probably start playing just for fun. I want to get a stable of go to cars set up for general use, like a car for each race type in each class.

BTW: great track that marathon, reminded me of need for speed back in the old days. Ps2 era i think there was a game called hot pursuit 2. Shame it’s at night, it’ll be great when they open up the custom race creator.

I didn’t screenshot it, but with the Nissan Nismo GTR LM FE (that has event influence boost as a FE car), the influence breakdown was something like this:

Placed 1st: 75k
Car perk boost: 14k
FE Influence boost: 10k
Skills: 10k
Clean Racing: 5k

Those are not the EXACT values, but close enough.

So the Nismo has a +20% boost for road racing perk, and a +15% to all races perk. Those two are reflected in the 14k

But on top of that you also get 10k from the FE boost. (Again, values are what I can roughly remember. I will try and make a screenshot next time). These values are for 3 races of the Goliath.

So for Marathon you won’t get that +20% from the perk, as I believe there is no car in the game that gives bonuses for street racing, but you will still get that FE Influence boost. It remains to be seen if it’s actually more lucrative to use that, or just use a car that is maxed out for skills, and try to get influence from doing insane skills.

It’s unfortunate that there’s no blueprint ability for the Street Races such as the Marathon. Leads me to believe we won’t be able to create Street Races at all with the Route Creator. Just normal point to points and circuits without any traffic. Bummer!

They’re my favorite type of race in the game but currently limited to the set locations and lengths, and all incredibly short besides the Marathon. Would be a shame if that’s all there is.

Hey i don’t have the gtr lm at this point but i was wondering if anyone has a tune for the elise gt lm that has a good top end for the marathon ? Those cars just fly away and sometimes rocket past at high speed. I sometimes work at holding them back, the lighting effects are beautiful when they illuminate in front of me

For winter I made an S2 Elise GT1, I was going for a Pikes Peak Hill Climb type of car and it’s amazing on the snow. Also there’s a couple areas near the playground games by the windmill where you can cut the track.

For the rest of the seasons I love my Ascari KZ1R tuned to S1. That car is basically a street legal track car and comes with great handling so you can just increase the power. I just personally prefer S1 since they aren’t quite as crazy.

If you tune your Elise at S1, you should be able to beat any difficulty. In personal experience, S2 and X cause issues with AI shooting in front of you like rockets. I think it’s because of stat boosts, but of course just speculation, cannot prove anything.

But I did the Marathon and Goliath in S1 tuned cars at Expert/Unbeatable, and was able to easily win. Trying to race on Expert/Unbeatable with S2 or X cars I cannot for the life of me come in higher than 5-6th.

Also please be aware that difficulty only affects CR. Influence is not affected by difficulty.

Hi there,

Just trying to reach lvl 20 for Street Racing so i’m farming the Marathon but it’s… yeah its long… very long.

I’m actually using the Lotus GT1 which gives +30% influence but i was wondering if you’d know of a better car with better perks for this event in particular ?

Thanks !

I used mostly A class cars to get to 20. They take a little longer but were easy enough on unbeatable that I got out far enough in front to concentrate on keeping up skill chains. I also used it as a first drive for A class race tunes because cars didn’t have to be perfect to win. The barn find Aston DB4 was probably the best to grind with … all-around strong race car with good top end, 30% event finish bonus and that extra 20% for 10 races bonus.