Forrest Butler: BBMX
Jenn Sheppard


The Miami-based Butler Brothers MX team is front-and-center as Florida's only Satellite race team as team owner Forrest Butler, 31, ascends over the traditional cookie-cutter motocross team. Three brothers Forrest, 31, Karsten, 28, Brandon, 24, hold records as the famously fortunate few and Forrest is often the voice of the team, authorizing press releases and pushing new endeavors.

Forrest gained early traction blazing the harescramble series through the ranks of motocross, making short work as an amateur rider. "If I could do it all over I would have stayed in B class one more year," Forrest said. "[Karsten] didn't jump out of B class until he moved out of B class and the same with Brandon. Forrest studied at the University of Florida for 5 years until he turned pro in 1999.
"I kind of followed the unwritten guidelines of motocross that says you have to train," Forrest said. "I actually didn't graduate, I just went there."Taking some of the best marketing strategies with him, Forrest took a stance on school; the success of the team is marked by well-educated individuals.
"We all kind of made it a point after," Forrest said. "That's always been our stance on school. It was like a domino effect with the team and pushing my brothers". By then, the driving force had caught on as the talented trio joined the professional ranks together. "I think the unique part of all three of us turning pro was that we were all the same speed at the same time at the same level," Forrest said. "It wasn't like one of us was so fast that he got a factory ride so he was always separated from the other two. On any given day, our team was always rotating. There was never one Butler that was faster than the other; we would always be mixing it up." Forrest hooked his mind on a way to build a practice track at his parent's near 97th Avenue in Miami, in addition to supplementing three riders in the East Coast SX Class.

Forrest raised enough money to earn his first corporate sponsorship and remembers the first time he learned someone was getting paid from a gear company. "I thought only factory riders got paid," Forrest said. "I went to a bunch of local businesses and raised $6,000. For a normal privateer, I was rich." As the only team with three brothers on the professional level, Forrest was gaining ground over the grumblers. "With us always being close, we all ended up being under the same sponsors," he said. The race team trends towards the sponsors who, in turn, take care of the team. "Our main focus in how we built the team is taking care of the sponsors first," Forrest said. BBMX currently lists riders such as Canada's Doug Dehaan and Florida's Jason Thomas (JT$), Shaun Skinner and Bryan Johnson, among the amateur ride of Lucas Crespi. With the recent efforts of JT$, BBMX has extremely erupted over the expected factory elite.

As Forrest handles most of the business behind the scenes, he recalls the team's first fan mail.
"The first year we ever got one-I got an email-and now it's coming full circle," he said. "I don't ever see things as getting big because I'm the one with all the stress. Well, sometimes I'll take a step back and look at it all, and it's kind of funny when I get my email list from Live Nation and I'm on the list."
Flattered by the amount of resumes, the team demands perfection and Forrest offers his advice.
"Mechanics who are willing to put in all the hard work at first will have the results later," Forrest said. "It is the same with racing; if they work for themselves, then the riders will notice that, and the results will suffer. Work hard for your rider; after all, it is his life that is on the line every time he rides that bike, and a good boss notices everything!" Of course, the BBMX team already has their guy; Willie Manning of WMI. "He is like Mitch Payton and Bones Bacon from Pro Circuit in one," Forrest said. "He handles the team's suspension, motors, testing and then also wrenches hands-on for team rider Bryan Johnson. He mechanics so that he can be as hands on as possible." However, Willie is not just a team mechanic. "He is a very dear friend who has been there since the beginning of the team in 2002," Forrest said. "We were friends way before that and he was actually one of the first sponsors we ever had from racing. He built WMR from the ground up-walked away and started WMI Racing Development. Willie is incredible with his work and knowledge when it comes to building race bikes. He knows what it takes to build the best suspension and the best motors. With that, quality and performance are key, and the only way to get that is by testing. We have put in so many testing hours and the outcome has become riders getting top 10 finishes in the hardest class the world has to offer. Results that don't lie-especially when they are beating out actual true factory suspension from Japan," Forrest said. In addition to his duties with BBMX, Willie perfects the dials of Florida's top amateur riders. "WMI [is] not only Florida's number one suspension and motor company, but also some of the best suspension on the market period," Forrest said. "You can't argue when a rider like [JT$] has turned the 7th fastest lap time overall at four SX's this year. A rider on that level can't do that on even just pretty good suspension, it has to be perfect. "When JT$ joined the BBMX team, Forrest welcomed his ex-roommate to the table. "At different points, Jason has lived in Gainesville, Tampa, Ocala; we were all roommates so we're all really close," Forrest said. "I didn't think my team was big enough to handle a rider like him. I made the decision to jump to Jason, and once I did it, now here we are a couple of months later, and Jason's happier with my team than he's ever been with any team. I never would have thought of doing it before-at the same time, I was looking at other teams on the outside, and you really don't know the inside and how they're treat some of the riders. That's a really good feeling to have a guy, national number 31 for a couple of years in a row, saying that about your team." As for the recent fuel incident blow out, the BBMX team handled the situation most appropriately, immediately issuing a press release stating, "Neither Jason Thomas, nor the BBMX race team, purposely cheated or used illegal race fuel. "The end result an actual advantage to the boss himself." I'm a rocket scientist on fuel now," Forrest said. "I'm a chemistry major-I'm up in all that stuff. At end of the day we had a bad bunch of fuel. VP makes how many hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel to put into how many hundreds of thousands of barrels. If you have one barrel that happened to have a leak in it for some reason, like we did-we were the first case that was ever high on specific gravity, and that ended up the reason the AMA was so hard on the whole thing. They automatically speculated that either VP was cheating or we were cheating and that wasn't the case at all. It was a classic case that we can barely afford to even buy that fuel, and we're only buying that fuel to be on the second level, we're not even on the factory level of fuel. What our fuel was illegal on actually makes the bike slower. We just happened to be brought up when they were brought up. By the time this article comes out a lot more will have happened. It's kinda like the eye of the storm," he said.

Undoubtedly, JT$'s experiences add clout to the company in competition. "His experience and that he has traveled entire country in his dad's van, had elite rides like Subway and even had a factory ride with Husqvarna, turned around and got knocked back down to traveling in the van again," Forrest said. "He's a very smart, common sense person. He sees stuff for what it is [and] doesn't think he should have this and this and that. His work ethic is just how hard he rides during practice."

Back home, the BBMX team showcases the surfer/motocrosser Lucas Crespi, who recently took a telling third moto win in 125 B at the last Winter Am series race. "Luke is the bomb," Forrest said. "He will be the first rider that we will groom from mini bikes and into the pro ranks in the next few years. Luke has so much potential and talent, and then also maintains a solid A grade point average in full-time public school. Those two combined are why he is where he is with BBMX. He is going to have a lot of success over the next two seasons in the B class. I know he hasn't even begun to show what he can do-heck, even he doesn't know what he has already started to do."

As the boss, his job of selecting riders comes with the territory. "Obviously you have results, but each year I try and scout around a couple guys who have sort of been around for a while," Forrest said. "It's important to me for the all around person. I have no cares to ever have a rock star on the team ever. It's all about the person and the image he has at home." Although, more than blood bonds the BBMX team around the dinner table. "Our team works together like a team, there's not another team out there that's as close as ours, literally," Forrest said. "There's not a weekend where we all aren't eating together, holding drinks up together, in each other's hotel room. When you asked me how do I pick my riders, that's how, I don't pick them on purpose, that's just the kind of person I like to have. Everybody is together, everybody loves hanging out with each other and it's just a lot of fun."

The newest shoes Forrest has had to fill is fathering 5-month-old Forrest Butler, Jr. "It's the coolest thing in the world," Forrest said. "You can have brothers, but when that little dude comes rolling around, it's pretty cool. You learn something new every day and the older he gets, he's just changing and changing. For some reason-my wife is a pretty small girl and I'd say I'm just an average size guy-he's a monster. He just turned five months this week and already he's 20 lbs. He's already standing and hold himself up, so we don't know if he's going to skip the whole crawling thing or what."
The resemblance apparent as Forrest described his son. "He looks like my dad and acts like my dad," he said. Duty called this year and the success of the team left only one brother on the battlefield.
"Actually Karsten volunteered-he was going to race again, then he separated his shoulder and he was going to be out for two months, so he started working directly in office every day," Forrest said. "[Karsten] realized just how much work I was actually carrying and what was going on and started helping me help make this thing grow into something enormous. That's why Brandon's the only one riding this year. We always sacrificed everything, and this year Brandon is starting to show drastic improvements, and he's going faster than we've ever gone." Despite the new qualifying schedule, Brandon has been in almost every night show. "He's qualified as high as 30th so it's pretty bad ass,"
The brothers hired Jason Baker of Dream Traxx to design a track in Gainesville. "We're trying to give Brandon everything that all three of us always wanted but we didn't all three have, but at least we can give it to him," Forrest said.

Having your own practice track is a necessity; Forrest originally planned one out in his own backyard.
"It's literally like a pit bike track is how small it is. On a quarter-acre square, I built a super tight little track that you can't even get out of first gear just to be able to ride almost every day. Even if it's rough, the most important thing is that you're riding on a real SX track everyday and we never had that. I'd be down here and we'd ride on sand MX tracks and go to SX on the weekend and try to be competitive."
The track held up for over a year, with only one neighbor ever complaining until Forrest came home one day to find bulldozer in the middle of what used to be his track, plowing away. "I looked to my right where there were two bowl turns and straight of whoops and there was nothing left. I looked straight to the end of the property where the finish line double was, it was gone also," Forrest described. "It was leveled there was nothing left. If I was famous, I would have known I was on MTV's PUNK'D."

Forrest would like to thank: Our parents and my entire team. All the guys that work for us. My dad's friends, and my other family, my cousins, everybody at home. People who have had my back through the hard times building this thing. There's literally too many to list, but my dad has a lot of good friends and he's spent his whole life building honest good relationships, and I think that's what pays off when you surround yourself with good people, you always have each other's back. All my friends and family and anybody and everybody who's every helped me with any part of the race team. I just want to take all those people. There has been too many articles where I don't get to thank those kind of people."

Coming up for BBMX next , "There's cool new team gear going out for the hometown races, but the biggest thing coming up back home is DNA Energy Drinks sponsorship," Forrest said. "They're based out of Florida and they're trying to stay regional in their first year of growth. March is going to be really big. They're growing so fast-our program is kind of fast forwarding it nationally. They had a 4-year-plan to not go national, but they just ended up going national within the year. It's basically starting in Atlanta and after you'll see it on the West. It just so much fun, you [always] have new friends coming in your pits all the time. It's just a good feeling when everybody is always around." By the time Forrest retires, BBMX will have attracted more attention with growing additions. "I could think about the million different ways [BBMX] could go-from good to bad, so I think about that, and then I try and go to sleep," he said with a laugh. "It could grow, it could shrink, it could win titles or go bankrupt. It is a business, and if you slack off for just one day, the business suffers. Where I want it to be is where it is headed. You can tell by the appearance that the team keeps making major jumps forward each year. We are working that much harder and coming up with that many more ideas each year. I can tell you that in 2009 you will be seeing two semis, a SX and Lites team. Who knows, if things go the way they might this year, you might just see that in 2008, but more likely not until '09-got to keep people thinking though!"

For more information on the Butler Brother's MX team, go to www.butlerbrothersmx.com.

DNA Energy Drink, BTOSports.com, Fly Racing, Rick Case Honda, FMF, SIDI, Engine Ice, Regina Chain, ICW, Michelin, OGIO, Twin Air, APPLIED, Up Front Mx, Six Six One, Sunline, Kinetic Animation, Powersports Honda, Sponsorhouse, Acerbis, Pro Cyle Safety, WISECO, ASMF Jax, Alpina, Pro Clean, Yellow Fin Yachts, ButlerBuckleyDeets.com, FLmxmag.com, Spy Optic, Seminole Tribe Motocross, Dream Traxx, Devol Engineering, Safety-kleen.com, mxidsystems.com, Frese, WMI Racing Development,