The whole silver Pinewood Derby track amazed Mike Shambaugh Saturday morning.

The tracks he was used to were 75 years old, wooden and, well, just regular old lanes for regular old Pinewood Derby cars. But this track had a laser attached to the starting line and, at the finish, a row of digital readouts that showed the cars’ speeds.

“It’s a little high-tech compared to the wooden ones we normally use,” Shambaugh said.

Shambaugh, a leader for Cub Scout Pack 3071, stood by the top of the track, ready to drop the first flag on this month’s pinewood race at Crown Chevrolet Toyota Scion, 3430 Iowa.

Saturday’s derby was part of a free monthly series of pinewood races put on by the Crown Kids’ Club, which is sponsored by local businesses.

The new technology was courtesy of David Boyd and Ryan Moyer, two dealership employees who began to build the somewhat complicated Pinewood Derby system last February.

It works like this: At the start of the metal track, a laser times the car’s starting point when Boyd pulls a switch. Another sensor at the finish line stops a computerized clock, timing each car’s run.

But that’s not all. The times are relayed to a computer, which translates the times into would-be speeds, calculating what each car would have been traveling if it had been, you know, real.

So all morning, little painted wooden cars were being clocked, some reaching relative speeds of 60 mph. Many of the Cub Scouts’ parents seemed impressed with the technology.

“Oh, it’s awesome,” Billie Jo Chaney said as she manned the cookie stand inside the dealership. “I expected a little plastic track or something like that.”

Her son, Kyle Gregg, raced a little purple car with some kind of rubber alien behind the make-believe wheel. The car finished a respectable third in several races, but Kyle and the other kids remained fairly quiet.

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Four at a time, wooden cars flew down the track. As they crossed the finish line, the announcer would yell out the times.

“All right, 3.26!” the announcer said after a pack leader read the time from the little digital screen.

Every now and then, a child would sit up, raise his arms in victory, then go back to talking with his friends.

Toward the end, though, the excitement picked up. Organizers handed out ribbons for the coolest car, best workmanship and best sportsmanship.

Then, on the track, it came down to three cars. When the trophies were handed out – regardless of times and miles per hour – the winners, including first-place finisher John Meuffel, erupted in smiles and cheers.