ardunio project or not?

Hwy just a general question that I couldn't find the correct forum to put this in.

But I see a lot of posts and coimments on project that are using the ardunio that say that is overkill using the arduno.

My project is simply making a lapcounter and laptimer for a 2 track slot car set,
Requirements are that it stores lap count for each track until lap count reset is hit.
Like wise the lap timer will display the lap time for each track aswell as one display with the fastest lap tim time until the lap timer reset is hit.

To me this is very arduno worthy for this.

The way I was going to do it was having lots of seven seg displays for all the displays and then have a timer for each track keeping time until a break in the ir signal (vectical to track).

is this a good way about going about this?
I am not sure how using the 11 seven seg displays. 3 for each time keeper and 1 for each tracks lap counter.

Should I look at lcds?
Thanks

The 7 segment displays have a nice look, but they take a bunch of pins to drive each one. Driving 11 of them, without additional hardware, won't be possible.

An LCD would be easy to setup to display 3 times and 2 lap counts.

That's what I would use.

Look at the MAX6954 you can control up to 16 seven segment display with this beast.

Use LCDs. I would not say it is overkill as long as you add extra stuff to make it arduino worthy. With my model electric car timer that I made, I added in time, average speed, best time, reaction time before pressing button (after starting lights) etc.

I used an arduino pro and used a serial LCD because I completely ran out of pins...

Mowcius