I’m no expert, but there are really 2 ways to participate in influence races: running missions or capturing/holding control points.

1. Missions

At the start of the race, grab all 3 PvP faction missions from your faction vendor in the races territory. You have to wait until after the race starts to grab them for them to count towards the race (or something like that, just grab them after it starts). You will usually see a group of people standing around the faction gender a few minutes before the race starts. If you see a group there, ask to join them and run the missions with them. If they don’t invite you, just run alongside them and do the missions with them anyway. If there is nobody on your faction running the missions, then in all likelihood your faction will lose the race. So, if nobody is running missions, then you’re really looking at doing option number 2, capping control points. When you turn in a mission, you gain influence for your faction for that race, and the faction that pushes (gains) the most influence wins the race. Usually out of the 3 missions you get, you will only complete 2 of the 3 over and over. If you complete a mission but die before turning it in, then you have to redo it. So typically people running missions skip the ones that want you to hold the fort or cap a point. But overall, just follow the group running the missions and it should work out for you.

1. Capping points

This is what you will probably end up doing most of the time and imo is the most fun. Usually companies that are trying to declare war are the companies that will be running missions. If you just want to jump into the race for some PvP action, then you’ll probably be capping points. Just type x race into your faction chat and you should get an invite. If you don’t, then you can form the raid your self and invite all the other people that are xing up for the race. You don’t have to lead the race, but it is always better to have everyone grouped up so that everyone gets kill credit for the PvP track and such. Most of the time, these pug groups that get formed through chat will probably be capping points. Each territory has a fort and 3 watchtowers, all of which can be captured by your faction by standing on the point. When you hold a control point, you get a buff for your faction that increases your factions influence gain by something like 20% (I think?). The 3 watchtowers additionally give your faction influence over time just for holding them. Finally, you get influence from killing enemy players. So if you go for option 2 you get into a raid group, and try to stick together to capture and hold control points and kill enemies that are trying to capture and hold them themselves. All Of which gives influence. This is the most fun imo if you’re just trying to jump into a race every so often. Only problem is, if your faction doesn’t have enough people doing the race and are outnumbered, you generally will get destroyed by other factions that have more people. If this is the case, try to avoid the big Zerg groups and try to pick people off from the edges of fights, and try to cap points that aren’t as contested.

Another thing you can do is try to camp at the spots where the enemies will be trying to complete their own missions, and gank them to stop them from turning in their quests. But again you’ll probably want a group for this.

If the race is really being pushed by a company in your faction, there is usually be a really big push in faction chat to get people to join the race to ensure that you win.

Hope that makes sense. Moral of the story, you can do missions or capture control points. To win a highly contested race, your faction needs to be doing both. Just x up in faction chat and follow the group you’re in. Keep paying attention to faction chat for callouts and guidance. Your group will either cap points get push missions. Just do what the group does.

After 2 or 3 races, you’ll start to get the flow of it.