Cardiovascular disease (CVD) rates are persistently higher in people with diabetes compared to those without diabetes. Rates of diabetes are also projected to increase in association with increasing rates of obesity and poor diet and physical activity in both developed and developing countries. In this study, we used the data from the prospective randomized LOOK AHEAD study and used Random Forest as the machine learning technique to determine the factors determining SBP in persons with diabetes in the study cohort. After excluding incomplete data, there were 4677 observations. Our analysis showed that maximal exercise capacity, age, ACR, and serum creatinine were the key variables that determined systolic blood pressure (in that order). The recognition of the importance of maximum exercise capacity as an important predictor of systolic blood pressure has an important therapeutic implications in prevention and treatment of hypertension in patients with type 2 diabetes.