Ken Lupton touches down in Brockville wearing back-to-back North American champion's colours, yet the man most likely to challenge that title may share his surname.
From 26–28 June 2026, the St. Lawrence River will belong to the 1000 Islands Regatta, returning to Blockhouse Island in Brockville, Ontario. For the locals, the weekend means food trucks, kids' zones, and evening rock concerts. Down in the pits, the atmosphere will be something altogether different. One question will cut through the noise like a throttle wide open: who walks away as champion this year?
The Lupton racing operation runs on a dual-hemisphere strategy. Ken's GP-577 Lucas Oil Racing team is targeting a Hydroplane Racing League (HRL) title defence on Canadian waters, while both Lupton squads will simultaneously campaign Grand Prix America (GPA) events across the United States. The whole programme is run out of a shared mechanical base in Brockville, deliberately tight and high-intensity, with crown-jewel regattas at Valleyfield and Madison forming the centrepiece before the calendar rotates back to the New Zealand summer series.
Ken steps into the cockpit of the GP-577 Lucas Oil machine as the reigning back-to-back HRL Grand Prix Champion. He claimed the Grand Prix class win at Brockville in 2023, and when unpredictable Canadian weather threw the 2024 weekend into chaos, he still stamped his authority on the event by posting the fastest time trials of the entire regatta.
Then there is Jack. At the wheel of the GP-33, he arrives carrying the momentum of a dominant recent New Zealand season, having led the Grand Prix leaderboard throughout. At this same Brockville venue in 2024, he pushed Ken Brodie to the absolute limit, finishing a razor-thin second in a deck-to-deck battle decided at the wire.
Brockville means more to Jack than a points-paying round on the circuit. In 2019, on this same stretch of the St. Lawrence, he walked away from a horrific on-water collision after Canadian driver Mathieu Daoust tragically lost control and crossed his path. He has kept coming back to this river, and kept going faster each time.
The New Zealand contingent arrives on a wave of momentum, though the Australasian summer was not without its complications. Ken did not top the New Zealand leaderboard as he has in previous seasons, with Jack's consistency at home proving simply unmatched throughout the series.
Even so, Ken carries real form into Canada. He captured the 2026 ANZAC Cup and spent a substantial portion of the year contesting the E.C. Griffith Cup, Australasia's most coveted prize in powerboat racing. The Griffith Cup proved elusive on this occasion, but that near-miss appears to have sharpened his hunger as he turns his focus back to North American waters.
Jack, meanwhile, is introducing a genuine unknown into the equation. He has brought to Canada a brand-new Henderson Grand Prix hydroplane hull, constructed by Bert Henderson and sitting at the very leading edge of current hydroplane design. If Ken had any intention of coasting to another North American title, his brother's new machine is about to make that considerably more complicated.
Getting a Grand Prix hydroplane programme to the other side of the world is no simple logistical exercise. Preparation began months in advance, involving massive hulls, spare supercharged big-block Chevy V8 engines, custom propellers, and a vast inventory of tools packed into shipping containers and dispatched across the Pacific, with the team left hoping everything cleared customs without incident.
By late May, the Lucas Oil New Zealand crew was already signalling their intentions to fans online with a straightforward message: "Less than one month… North America, the Luptons are coming."
The entire New Zealand season has been pointed at this North American circuit. When the green flag drops over the St. Lawrence River and racing gets underway at Brockville, watch for the wall of white water and listen for the engine note that sounds like a fighter jet wrestling a thunderstorm. That will be the boys from down under, and they will have well and truly arrived.
