Two weeks ago at Brockville, the Lupton brothers arrived with everything to prove and left with more questions than answers. At Valleyfield, they answered almost all of them, only for the final to have the last word.
The 1000 Islands Regatta was meant to be the start. Ken Lupton rolled into Brockville as the back to back HRL Grand Prix champion, and his brother Jack brought GP-33 JLM Motorsport, a hull that was new to Jack for the New Zealand season just gone and had already proven itself on home waters, across the Pacific for its North American debut. On paper it should have been ready to race. On the water, it simply wasn’t playing ball. Jack’s Q-1B run returned no time, and Q-2B was the same story, the boat wasn’t completing a heat. Ken won his own Q-1B heat in dominant fashion, only for the GP-577 Lucas Oil to retire from Q-2A and again from the final.
The full story emerged after the chequered flag. Three engines across the two boats were found to share a common fault. With no time to strip and rebuild before the drive to Madison, the team made the call to withdraw from the following weekend’s event and regroup. Madison went ahead without them, Brandon Kennedy sweeping the Grand Prix class in the GP-35 TMSpecial with Greg Hopp second, and the Luptons went back to the workshop.
Testing resumed at Pont Larocque, just outside Valleyfield, in the days before the third round of the 2026 Grand Prix America season. Jack was up first, on 9 July, happy with the progress since Brockville. The team set up at Valleyfield the following day ready for testing and time trials.
Whatever was found in that testing session worked. In time trials, Jack topped the field in GP-33 with a time of 31.95 seconds, with Ken second in GP-577 on 32.50, a gap of just over half a second between the brothers and clear water back to third-placed John Shaw. Speaking afterwards, Jack put it down to the work done between Brockville and Valleyfield.
“We managed to get it adjusted during a test session between Brockville and now, on Sunday, behind Valleyfield,” he said. “We got good data, good feedback, we changed a lot of weight in the boat, we moved the plane forward, and that obviously made the boat much happier in tight conditions and not so free floating.”
From there, the brothers put together the kind of qualifying campaign that had eluded them at Brockville. Jack won Q-1A, Q-2A and Q-3A outright, and got quicker in every round: 2:22.94, then 2:23.36, then a heat-best 2:19.57 in Q-3A, the fastest lap of the entire regatta. Ken matched him almost heat for heat, winning Q-1B in 2:29.47 and Q-3C in 2:26.10. His only blemish came in Q-2B. Bobby King’s GP-50 Freedom, Andrew Tate’s GP-71 The Wild One and Ken’s GP-577 ran against each other with Tate crossing in 2:24.52 to Ken’s 2:30.95, a 6.4 second margin.
Between them, the Luptons had beaten every other boat in the fleet at least once heading into finals day, an emphatic turnaround from a fortnight earlier.”As for the hot race, anyone can have a good race here, and lots of people can have a great time,” Jack said of the heat racing. “But once you get into a race, that changes, it gets tougher, and you’re up against a good driver, so it’s always difficult.”
With qualifying done, Jack and Ken had locked out the top two grid positions for Sunday’s final, the two Kiwi boats almost untouched through three full rounds of heats. It set up the final as a straight shootout between the pace the Luptons had shown all weekend but Andrew Tate had already started to look dangerous. And in the end, it was Tate who found another gear when it mattered. The Wild One took the chequered flag to claim the Grand Prix title at Valleyfield, his third win at the regatta, with Brandon Kennedy’s GP-35 TMSpecial second and Kent Henderson’s GP-757 Canada Boy third. John Shaw brought GP-135 Koolkat home fourth. For the Luptons, the final didn’t go to script: Jack crossed in fifth in GP-33, and Ken’s GP-577 Lucas Oil retired from the race, ending a weekend of near total qualifying dominance without the result to match it.
It leaves a curious taste for a campaign that, on the numbers, was strong. Four heat wins between them, a front row lockout in time trials, and not a single non-finish across three rounds of qualifying, undone in the one race that counted for the win. The regroup after Brockville clearly worked. Whether it’s enough to build from before the next round, Thunder on the Niagara 2026 (North Tonawanda), remains the story to watch.
Grand Prix Final
Régates de Valleyfield — 12 July 2026
| Pos | Boat | Driver | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GP-71 The Wild One | Andrew Tate | 25 |
| 2 | GP-35 TMSpecial | Brandon Kennedy | 21 |
| 3 | GP-757 Canada Boy | Kent Henderson | 18 |
| 4 | GP-135 Koolkat | John Shaw | 15 |
| 5 | GP-33 JLM Motorsport | Jack Lupton ★ | 8 |
| — | GP-577 Lucas Oil | Ken Lupton ★ | DNF |
★ New Zealand
2026 Series Points Standings
After Régates de Valleyfield
| Pos | Boat | Driver | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GP-35 T.M Special | Brandon Kennedy | 163 |
| 2 | GP-10 The Freak | Kevin Eacret | 139 |
| 3 | GP-135 Kool Kat Motorsports | John Shaw | 93 |
| 4 | GP-15 Happy Go Lucky | Greg Hopp | 88 |
| 5 | GP-17 Miss Renee | Josh Culver | 87 |
| 6 | GP-235 Kool Kat Motorsports 2 | Brent Hall | 58 |
| 7 | GP-24 The Kraken | Dave Muczinski / John Grigg | 55 |
