Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Unless your a trophy/achievement hunter like I am, most people don't pay much attention to their driver level as everything you'll truly need for the game is unlocked right away in the first 5 or so levels. But for us trophy/achievement hunters, there's 6 of them related to your driver level, earning one every 5 levels until you hit level 30. Problem is once you hit level 10 or so, it quickly starts getting a lot tougher to level up further. To shorten the grind, head over to the challenge series and select the "Industrial Run" set from stage 8 of The Run. From there select the third of the 5 challenges also called "Industrial Run" funnily enough. You will have to complete stage 8 of The Run in story mode to unlock that set of challenges. By then you'll definitely have a few levels to get you started. You'll also have to complete the first 2 challenges in that set before unlocking the one you need. After that you're finally set to begin the grind. Use the Lamborghini Gallardo as it has the power & stability you'll need to make this work. Keep an eye on your distance from the finish line down by the map. Don't worry about going for a gold or platinum medal. Time doesn't matter here as long as you atleast get some kind of medal which won't be a problem.
Hang back in last place until around 2.8 miles to go then floor it, use your entire nitrous tank, and take the shortcut on your left. Don't use any of your NOS before this point and make sure you don't pass anyone before then. You should fly right past the first 7-8 cars in rapid succession. It's this that will get you the majority of your XP. Passing multiple cars in quick succession gets you a "rapid pass" bonus that keeps growing the more you extend your streak, as long as you do it quickly enough. Every pass gets another 100 XP added to it. So the second pass gets you 200 XP, the third gets you 300 XP, and so on. If you get up to an 8 car streak you'll get 3,600 XP from that one streak alone. You also get a little XP regardless just for passing someone you haven't passed yet so you'll get another 400 XP in addition. 50 XP if it's a clean pass, making contact with someone before completing the pass makes it a dirty pass and only gets you 25 XP, so try to keep all your passes clean if you can. But then again if you took the shortcut on your left like I mentioned, this shouldn't be a problem as you'll have a clear path around the log jam of other cars as none of the AI's will use this shortcut.
With 1.3 miles to go another shortcut will come up on your left. Use it to get around the last 2 cars more easily. Don't use your NOS again until exiting this shortcut where you'll be on the home straight as those 2 AI's will use all of their NOS here so you're gonna need yours as you have to win the race to actually get any of the XP you just earned. If you lose, everything you just earned is lost & you have to try again. Another important thing when doing this is try not to crash out if you can avoid it. Crashing out triggers an automatic checkpoint reset and if you can win while still having all 5 of your resets, you'll get 500 XP for a "perfect run" bonus in addition to a 250 XP bonus for having all 5 of your resets remaining for a combined 750 extra XP. This means having to use just one reset will cost you an additional 550 XP as you lose 50 XP for each reset you have to use. Using all of your resets then crashing out again afterwards will also cause you to fail, losing all of your XP and forcing you to restart.
An 8 car passing streak combined with a perfect run should get you over 5,000 total XP. You can sometimes on extremely lucky occasions even get a 9 car rapid pass streak which will get you over 6,000 XP if you can make it to the end without wrecking. Sadly 8-9 car streaks, 9 especially, are pretty rare as all the stars have to align perfectly for it. More often than not you'll probably get around a 6-7 car streak consistently, which will get about 3,500-4,250 XP per run. I spent almost 15 minutes restarting this event until I got this run with an 8 car streak to show what this method can really be capable of when everything goes right, but don't count on it every time. The AI's often get too far spread out to pass all those cars in one streak to get maximum XP. Practice makes perfect, the more you run this challenge, the more consistently you'll find yourself getting better XP payouts as you consistently get better streaks and crash out less often. Getting to level 30 will still be a bitch even with this method, but it will still be much less of a grind than if you just played through the story over & over again.
Unless your a trophy/achievement hunter like I am, most people don't pay much attention to their driver level as everything you'll truly need for the game is unlocked right away in the first 5 or so levels. But for us trophy/achievement hunters, there's 6 of them related to your driver level, earning one every 5 levels until you hit level 30. Problem is once you hit level 10 or so, it quickly starts getting a lot tougher to level up further. To shorten the grind, head over to the challenge series and select the "Industrial Run" set from stage 8 of The Run. From there select the third of the 5 challenges also called "Industrial Run" funnily enough. You will have to complete stage 8 of The Run in story mode to unlock that set of challenges. By then you'll definitely have a few levels to get you started. You'll also have to complete the first 2 challenges in that set before unlocking the one you need. After that you're finally set to begin the grind. Use the Lamborghini Gallardo as it has the power & stability you'll need to make this work. Keep an eye on your distance from the finish line down by the map. Don't worry about going for a gold or platinum medal. Time doesn't matter here as long as you atleast get some kind of medal which won't be a problem.
Hang back in last place until around 2.8 miles to go then floor it, use your entire nitrous tank, and take the shortcut on your left. Don't use any of your NOS before this point and make sure you don't pass anyone before then. You should fly right past the first 7-8 cars in rapid succession. It's this that will get you the majority of your XP. Passing multiple cars in quick succession gets you a "rapid pass" bonus that keeps growing the more you extend your streak, as long as you do it quickly enough. Every pass gets another 100 XP added to it. So the second pass gets you 200 XP, the third gets you 300 XP, and so on. If you get up to an 8 car streak you'll get 3,600 XP from that one streak alone. You also get a little XP regardless just for passing someone you haven't passed yet so you'll get another 400 XP in addition. 50 XP if it's a clean pass, making contact with someone before completing the pass makes it a dirty pass and only gets you 25 XP, so try to keep all your passes clean if you can. But then again if you took the shortcut on your left like I mentioned, this shouldn't be a problem as you'll have a clear path around the log jam of other cars as none of the AI's will use this shortcut.
With 1.3 miles to go another shortcut will come up on your left. Use it to get around the last 2 cars more easily. Don't use your NOS again until exiting this shortcut where you'll be on the home straight as those 2 AI's will use all of their NOS here so you're gonna need yours as you have to win the race to actually get any of the XP you just earned. If you lose, everything you just earned is lost & you have to try again. Another important thing when doing this is try not to crash out if you can avoid it. Crashing out triggers an automatic checkpoint reset and if you can win while still having all 5 of your resets, you'll get 500 XP for a "perfect run" bonus in addition to a 250 XP bonus for having all 5 of your resets remaining for a combined 750 extra XP. This means having to use just one reset will cost you an additional 550 XP as you lose 50 XP for each reset you have to use. Using all of your resets then crashing out again afterwards will also cause you to fail, losing all of your XP and forcing you to restart.
An 8 car passing streak combined with a perfect run should get you over 5,000 total XP. You can sometimes on extremely lucky occasions even get a 9 car rapid pass streak which will get you over 6,000 XP if you can make it to the end without wrecking. Sadly 8-9 car streaks, 9 especially, are pretty rare as all the stars have to align perfectly for it. More often than not you'll probably get around a 6-7 car streak consistently, which will get about 3,500-4,250 XP per run. I spent almost 15 minutes restarting this event until I got this run with an 8 car streak to show what this method can really be capable of when everything goes right, but don't count on it every time. The AI's often get too far spread out to pass all those cars in one streak to get maximum XP. Practice makes perfect, the more you run this challenge, the more consistently you'll find yourself getting better XP payouts as you consistently get better streaks and crash out less often. Getting to level 30 will still be a bitch even with this method, but it will still be much less of a grind than if you just played through the story over & over again.
