I noticed when using "Render Selected" mode or a 3DS Max region then each pass can take a long time.
However if you then add a Corona VFB region around the area that is rendering, the whole render suddenly speeds up.
It would be great if Corona could intelligently add a VFB region around the area that is rendering.
Perhaps Corona already does something like this behind the scenes but at least in my testing it appears to make a big difference (with one pass every few minutes going down to every few seconds).
Cheers.