[woodcote]

Looks awesome

Will you be building a Dunlop bridge at the end of the pit lane? That could be used as a light gantry for lap timing sensors. If not, the choice is a dead strip or opto-sensors in the slot. The problem with the latter is they only work well with black guide blades - and I guess some of your vintage builds will have other colours. At least with cutting the dead strip, you have plenty of spare pieces of track if you need them.

I like the simplicity and robustness of the Trackmate module - and you can run numerous software options from it, including Race Coordinator. Or an Arduino board and Race Coordinator is cheaper and isn't too difficult to put together (see here). Depends what vintage of computer you'll be using.