Tracks

BestTrack® - Original All Aluminum Track
The Ultimate Track for Pinewood Racing!

BestTrack® Pinewood Derby® Tracks
131 Oakridge Drive
Forest City, Iowa 50436

BestTrack® is the manufacturer of the original and unique all aluminum track. You can expand one lane at a time as your budget allows. It's strong, lightweight, and the joints are as smooth as glass due to their proprietary extrusion design with (4) 3/16" diameter registration pins between sections. They have many accessories to enhance the event.

All Aluminum Pinewood and Space Tracks! They produce the only aluminum Space Derby® track on the market.

Pinewood and Space Timers! Electronics by SmartLine Timers. BestTrack's Champ timer electronics is manufactured by us, SmartLine Timers at eTekGadget.com. You can purchase the "double sided with time" timer from them or purchase a different style of display from us and get the same high quality results.
If you have a BestTrack® Champ or SmartLine Pinewood timer, you can purchase our Space Retrofit Sensors and use the same timer for both events.

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Homemade track
How To Build A Cheap Pinewood Derby Track.

Wayne has a multitude of information about his track.
"Building a good 4-lane pinewood derby track is challenging and time consuming. But it's also one of the most satisfying projects I've ever completed. Using the track for races, whether small family get togethers or large pinewood derby races for the local scout clubs, is a lot of fun."

He used our SmartLine timer and powered it with a battery. He explains how and why. Please see our FAQ page section:
Battery instead of a power supply. Here are some options.

Race Management Software

GrandPrix Race Manager - This is a very nice package for tabular style races such as Lane Rotation, Stearns, Perfect-N Series and Round Robin. This package includes everything you need to run a smooth race. Awards, certificates and sound effects create a fun atmosphere. This package includes special features of our timer including the masking of unused lanes and masking of a "Bye" lane. Follow this link to "What's New" in the GrandPrix Race Manager.

Forums and Informational Sites

ABC Pinewood Derby® - Your “How to” guide to the Pinewood Derby® Car. Everything you need to design, build, win and even manage a Pinewood Derby® race. This site has a very good race management procedure. Our pack prefers to hold a registration night before the race event night. This will allow for more time to 'work' on the cars if the weight is a problem. We have a working table with a scale or 2 and another table with the OFFICIAL scale. Once the cars are registered, we take a digital picture of them for our web site and store them in Tupperware boxes until race night. You can see our race plan on the race procedures page.

Miscellaneous Sites for helpful information

There are two free terminal programs available for communication with the SmartLine timer listed below. Follow the link to download one. HyperTerminal is no longer available on Windows computers.

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Terminal - a terminal emulation program for RS-232(serial) communication

Terminal program for basic communication with SmartLine Finish Line Timer. Terminal is a free software terminal emulator (communication program) for Windows. This is old software but it still works on newer Windows systems. It can be used for communication with different devices such as modems, routers, serial port connection, and so on. You can use this program to communicate with the SmartLine Timer at the command level. The Command Manual will give you all the details such as the baud rate, data bits, parity and stop bits you need to hook up and communicate. It also gives you a list of the commands and the expected responses. This is a very useful tool.

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Tera Term Pro

This terminal program is for basic communication with SmartLine Finish Line Timer. Tera Term (Pro) is a free software terminal emulator (communication program) for Windows. This is old software but it still works on newer Windows systems. It supports VT100 emulation, telnet connection, serial port connection, and so on. You can use this program to communicate with the SmartLine Timer at the command level. The Command Manual will give you all the details you need to hook up and communicate.