A Championship Season
Hurst & Co. Journal
A championshipseason.
Hurst & Co. × Kingpin Racing2026 / No. 81
It began at Sebring. Porsche Sprint Challenge brought us to Kingpin Racing. The people made it personal.
Sebring is where this story began.
That is why the watch carries the name.
Before there was a Kingpin interpretation, before Jon’s championship, and before I delivered his timepiece at Road Atlanta, there was our involvement with Porsche Sprint Challenge. We were developing a chronograph around a world we wanted Hurst & Co. to be part of.
I could tell you about the watch first. The dial, the case, the way the design developed. But looking back on this season, the people come to mind before the specifications.
Tyler Hoffman. Patrick Wilmot. Jon Brel.
Porsche Sprint Challenge opened the route to Kingpin Racing and Tyler. That connection grew into a relationship, a custom interpretation of the Sebring, and our support for the team through 2026.
By the time I handed Jon his watch at Road Atlanta, he had secured the GSX Bronze Cup championship in Kingpin’s No. 81. The timepiece had reached its owner during a weekend that gave the whole season its conclusion.
Getting to that moment is the story.
In this story
Chapter 01 / Hurst & Co. Journal
Sebring Was the Beginning
When you build a watch around motorsport, the connection needs somewhere to start.
For us, that place was Sebring, through our involvement with Porsche Sprint Challenge. It shaped the original chronograph and gave the watch a name with a reason behind it. Every Sebring carries that beginning with it.
There is an obvious connection between chronographs and racing. Time is part of the language of both. On a circuit, a fraction of a second can change a result. On your wrist, the fascination becomes something you can carry into the rest of your life.
That connection drew us in. Becoming involved gave it a much more personal meaning.
Porsche Sprint Challenge brought us into an environment where a watch could lead to an introduction, and an introduction could lead to something neither person had planned at the beginning.
That was how the path to Kingpin opened.
At that point, there was no championship celebration to build a partnership around. Nobody knew how Jon’s 2026 season would finish. We had our original chronograph, a connection through racing, and the opportunity to get to know a team.
The Sebring would eventually become the foundation for a Kingpin watch. First, the relationship had to grow.
Chapter 02 / Hurst & Co. Journal
A Team Name Becomes People You Know
Knowing a team changes the way you follow racing.
Before that connection exists, you can enjoy a race, admire a car, and move on to whatever comes next. Once you know the people involved, the next result means something different.
You want their work to pay off.
That is where Tyler, Patrick and Jon became part of the Hurst & Co. story. Kingpin began to mean more to us than a name on an entry list. We had a relationship with people inside the team, and a reason to care about where their season was going.
Tyler Hoffman is Kingpin’s owner. He opened the door to our relationship with the team. Patrick Wilmot is Tyler’s close partner and a driver coach, with a major role across Kingpin and with all of its drivers. His contribution reaches well beyond one car or one championship campaign.
Getting to know them gave us a better understanding of the people behind Kingpin. Tyler’s ownership and Patrick’s involvement with the drivers are part of what gives the team its character. Following Jon’s season meant following a driver within that wider effort.
Jon Brel is one of Kingpin’s pro drivers, racing the No. 81. His campaign gave us a car to follow, but the relationship was wider than that one car. A driver takes the performance onto the circuit. Around him is the preparation, support and coaching that helps make that performance possible.
Later in the season, Jon would speak about the progress Kingpin had made and the support around him. Those comments matter because they let you hear the driver recognise the people helping him improve. Patrick’s work with the drivers is a major part of the team we had come to know.
You can see that wider effort in Patrick’s own account of a difficult WRL weekend at Watkins Glen in August. Writing on August 31, he described setbacks on track, the crew’s work and his pride in the people around him. It was a separate campaign from Jon’s GSX season, but it showed something of the team behind both: people who kept working together when the result gave them little to celebrate.
A championship trophy cannot explain all of that on its own.
Our involvement with Kingpin developed while the season was still uncertain. We supported the team before Road Atlanta gave the year its ending. There were still opportunities to take, points to recover and races that could change the championship.
Following that process gives the final result a different weight. You have seen the position change over time. You understand that the celebration has a history behind it.
For us, that history began through Porsche Sprint Challenge, with a watch and an introduction.
Chapter 03 / Hurst & Co. Journal
The Sebring Finds a New Purpose
The original Sebring chronograph became the foundation for the Kingpin interpretation.
This is a part of watchmaking I love. You begin with a design, then a relationship gives you a reason to look at it again. The watch has a particular destination now. There are people at the other end of the process.
The Kingpin interpretation went further than adding a logo.
We wanted the watch to carry an identity that belonged to the relationship. The Sebring gave us the foundation. Kingpin gave that foundation a new context.
Look at the design renders beside one another and you can follow the connection. The original Porsche Sprint Challenge chronograph has its black dial. The Kingpin interpretation brings a silver dial and dark subdials into the picture. The character changes, while the connection between the watches remains visible.
One has led to the other.
That matters to me because it keeps the history inside the design. The Kingpin watch grew from the same involvement that had introduced us to the team. It belongs to the story from the beginning.
You can spend a long time looking at a watch as an object. Considering its appearance. Working through how the details sit together. Looking at the whole thing again after changing something small.
Then you think about the person who will receive it.
That brings a different kind of satisfaction to the work. You want the watch to mean something to them. You want there to be a reason they will remember how it came into their life.
By the time Jon received his timepiece, the Kingpin interpretation had gained a season’s worth of history beyond the original design.
The original. The interpretation.
Chapter 04 / Hurst & Co. Journal
Following the Season Gives the Watch a Story
Hurst & Co. supported Kingpin through 2026.
Our connection had begun through Porsche Sprint Challenge. Jon’s championship campaign took place in IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge, where he drove the No. 81 Kingpin Racing Toyota GR Supra GT4 EVO2 and contested the GSX Bronze Cup.
That distinction is part of the story. One racing environment brought us together. The relationship then gave us a team to follow into another.
In July, ahead of Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Jon was third in the Bronze standings, 80 points back. There was a championship within reach, but he was chasing it. At CTMP, he took his first Bronze Cup win of the season. The No. 81 had a breakthrough to build on.
There is a photograph from Mid-Ohio earlier that summer of Jon on the podium, pouring champagne over his head beside Rob Walker.
I like what that photograph brings to this story.
You can spend a lot of time looking at standings and still miss the person inside the season. That image brings the joy back into it. The results give us a way to understand the competition. A moment like that reminds us why someone puts so much into it in the first place.
The next major change came at VIR in August.
Jon won the Bronze Cup in both races. After the first, he credited Kingpin’s preparation and progress, then told IMSA:
“We’re here to learn and we’re also here to win.”
That is a line worth holding onto. Jon recognised the help around him and the progress they were making together. He wanted to improve, and he wanted to see what that improvement could achieve.
After VIR, his advantage over Rafael Martinez stood at 110 points. The pursuit had become a lead, with the final weekend still ahead.
For Hurst & Co., the team we had met through Porsche Sprint Challenge was now taking the season towards a championship. The watch had stayed connected to that relationship as the year developed.
It already had a reason to exist. Now it had more of a story behind it.
Jon Brel / IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge / 2026
You follow the car.Then you care about the people.
The relationship began through Porsche Sprint Challenge. Jon’s championship was earned in the GSX Bronze Cup, driving Kingpin’s No. 81 Toyota.
July / CTMP
The breakthrough.
80 points back before the weekend. Jon took his first Bronze Cup win of the season at CTMP.
Read this chapter →August / VIR
The pursuit becomes a lead.
Two Bronze Cup wins at VIR took Jon to a 110-point advantage, with the finale still ahead.
Read this chapter →October / Road Atlanta
A season comes together.
A Thursday Bronze win. The title secured by starting Friday’s finale. Philip delivered Jon’s watch that weekend.
Read this chapter →Chapter 05 / Hurst & Co. Journal
Road Atlanta Brings It Together
Jon arrived at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta still holding that 110-point lead over Martinez.
I was there during Petit Le Mans, spending time with Kingpin. The season we had supported was reaching its final weekend, and I had Jon’s watch to deliver.
On Thursday, October 1, he took another Bronze Cup win. IMSA reported that his provisional advantage increased to 160 points. On Friday, October 2, starting the finale was enough to secure the GSX Bronze Cup title in the No. 81.
The final race itself was difficult. Angus Rogers took the Bronze Cup victory that morning. Jon became champion through the position he and Kingpin had built across the season.
That gives the achievement its weight.
The deficit in July was part of it. So was the breakthrough at CTMP. The two Bronze wins at VIR. The result on Thursday. All of those moments had brought him to the final start with enough behind him to secure the title.
A championship contains much more than the race that confirms it.
Being at Road Atlanta gave our own involvement a personal connection to that conclusion. Porsche Sprint Challenge had brought us to Kingpin. The relationship had produced a watch. We had supported the team through the season.
Now I was there with the people who had made that relationship matter, ready to put the timepiece into Jon’s hands.
Chapter 06 / Hurst & Co. Journal
Delivering Jon’s Watch
I personally delivered Jon his Hurst & Co. timepiece at Road Atlanta.
It is a simple sentence. There is a lot of history inside it.
The watch began with the Sebring, developed around our involvement with Porsche Sprint Challenge. That involvement opened the route to Kingpin and Tyler. The relationship grew around Tyler, Patrick and Jon, and continued through the team’s 2026 season.
By the time the watch reached Jon, his season had culminated in a Bronze championship.
You can photograph a watch before it has ever been worn and show someone almost everything about its appearance. The dial. The case. The way the details work together.
What you cannot show in a design render is the history its owner will associate with it.
That arrives through life.
For Jon’s timepiece, Road Atlanta became part of that history. So did the team, the season and the relationship that had brought the watch there.
As someone building an independent watch brand, seeing that connection reach its recipient matters to me. The design has left the drawing. The commission has become someone’s watch.
Being there to deliver it myself allowed me to be part of that moment.
The original idea had travelled a long way from Sebring. It had brought us into a relationship with Kingpin and given us the chance to contribute something personal to people we had come to know.
At Road Atlanta, I could see that whole journey in the timepiece I had brought with me.
Jon Brel’s timepiece
Chapter 07 / Hurst & Co. Journal
What Motorsport Means to Us Now
Jon and Kingpin earned the championship.
We were proud to support the team, to follow the season and to share something of our own with people who had become part of the Hurst & Co. story.
That is where this relationship has its value for us.
Sebring gave the watch its beginning and its name. Porsche Sprint Challenge shaped the original chronograph and opened the connection to Kingpin. Tyler, Patrick Wilmot and Jon Brel gave that connection its human meaning.
The Kingpin interpretation carries those things together.
When I look at it now, I can follow the history back through Road Atlanta, through Jon’s season, through the relationship with the team and all the way to Sebring.
We entered motorsport believing a watch brand could contribute something meaningful to the culture around racing. Making a timepiece was something we could bring to that world. Becoming involved showed us how much we could take from it as well.
Over time, a team you meet becomes a team you care about. Their progress becomes something you are pleased to see happen for people you know. A watch becomes a way to carry part of that shared history into whatever comes next.
That is what being part of motorsport has come to mean to me.
We began with a chronograph at Sebring. We found a relationship through Porsche Sprint Challenge. We followed Kingpin through a championship season, and I delivered Jon his watch at Road Atlanta.
The greatest value we found along the way was in the relationships created by actually being there.
Those people are now part of the watch’s story.
And part of ours.
