I'll post what I do for optimization of each rank here.
So far as I mentioned on the discord, crashes are much faster and you can unlock rank 4 with only using crashes if you get gold on all of them. If you miss a couple, the Burning routes in rank 3 are both under 1min 30s as a backup strat.
Had 6 missed stars and needed 4 to get to rank 4 I was missing 11 getting to unlock rank 5. I need 15 more at this point. I got 4 from a burning route in rank 3.
Rank 2 has a burning route (2min 20sec) which unlocks a road rage that can be used as backup strats for unlocking rank 5.
Missing 2 crash stars to get to rank 5 Because the last two crashes in 4 are shit. Two burning routes from rank 3 are quick enough. Got to rank 5 which only has two crashes.
After doing all rank 5 crashes I still needed 18 stars. I was missing 3 because of hard crashes. All burning routes are faster than the remaining events. Next fastest is Road Rage if you total yourself. 6 Crash events in rank 6. I need 48 stars to progress, There will be 18 left after the crashes
23 stars left after finishing all rank 6 crashes ¤missing 3 stars
If you are a 5 or less stars behind at rank 6, fastest backup in the preview event in rank 1 which unlocks after doing the burning lap, traffic attack, and road rage. It wouldn't hurt to do the preview lap anyway since you'll need to come back later to level up.
56 stars needed at the start of rank .
I'll take note of all the non crash levels I completed after I reach rank 10. Burning Laps are automatically faster, I'm looking at the Burnout wiki to see what events unlock the faster cars. I know a few decent cars unlock at mid level road rages/traffic attacks, so now the question is if its worth doing a longer road rage to save time on races.
http://burnout.wikia.com/wiki/Factory_M-Type_DX
Finished the 5 crash events in rank 7 31 stars left
Was 1 star short of unlocking 8 Had to do a few low rank races that had only 1 or two laps. 63 stars to rank nine 9
75 Stars to go at rank 9.
Unfortunately, it looks like I won't be able to unlock all the Gran Prixs, so Elite% and Any% will have slightly different routes. I'd have to do an elimination race in rank 3 to unlock the Gran Prix and since its 6 laps long its too slow for Elite%.
Got to Rank 10 148 stars to Elite Rank.
Total game time is 6 hours with at least 1h 30min of me being shit. So a good runner could get to Rank 10 in 4 hours.
There is no Rank 10 listed under misc at the time of this post, so idk if Elite% is suppose to be Rank 10 or if Rank 10 is to be under misc.
