It’s been a challenging road for Maximus Vohland, with the early stages of his pro career impacted by injuries that left many wondering what might’ve been. But last weekend out in Pittsburgh, the Sacramento native turned a corner, earning his first-ever Supercross podium with a strong third-place finish in the stacked 250SX East main event. Hear directly from Vohland following the race in this Five Questions feature.

Image: Octopi Media.

Max, a first-career podium for you. Surely a massive weight off your shoulders, walk us through what you went through last year with that injury, the road to come back, and how good it feels to finally be in this position!

Absolutely, it was such a long road for me – coming out of the hospital after the dislocated hip, then having the sciatic nerve problem. I lost pretty much all feeling in my foot and also mobility, so yeah it was such a long road, and i went through so many ups and downs. There were a lot of days in the midst of it all where I really thought I’d never be able to race again, then the hand brake became an idea and I just kind of ran with it. We went through so many different variations of it and it finally got to the point where I was able to ride at a decent level, then that system ended up not working, I was having problems with it and I wasn’t finishing races. We had to go to a new system, and Daytona was the first round I had it, and that was it really, I knew it was solid enough to be able to do what I needed to do. We really just built from there, it’s been a slow steady build, but we’ve been working hard at ClubMX. It’s good to get that first podium and finally get that monkey off my back, it’s a lot of weight lifted off my shoulders.

You covered a lot of it there, but can you touch a little more on the mental side? There is a lot behind the scenes that we don’t see, how do you keep chasing this dream through all that you’ve been through?

Honestly, the injury – I felt like – definitely made me a lot stronger. Just overcoming being able to ride at such a high level with the handbrake, it gives me confidence in myself because I’m overcoming and achieving something that no one has done before. I kind of just kept running with that, and like I said, it’s been a very steady build. Lowkey, we’ve just been under the radar, but we finally decided to show up tonight and make it happen.

Image: Octopi Media.

What’s the mood like at the truck? Your team is no stranger to being up [on the podium] this year. How does it feel to be among the greats within ClubMX?

Absolutely! It’s just good to give back to them for all of the hard work we’ve done in the off-season. I definitely made them do a lot of work with figuring out the handbrake, so it’s good just to give that back to them. It’s also a great feeling just to get my first-career podium and the team’s second podium this year. It shows that the works we’re putting in is starting to pay off. Our bike is good, we’re in a good spot, so we’re just steady building and trying to be one percent better everyday.

Talk about learning how to use that handbrake, because you’ve obviously been riding with that for a while now. Have you found any advantages to riding with it?

It was definitely a huge learning curve. We went through so many variations, we kept changing it so many time over and over to try and get it figured out. So it was kind of hard to build the muscle memory at first, but once we got the right setting and the right setup at Daytona, it’s been steady building from there. I feel like it does have its advantages, especially in outdoors. I can keep my feet on the pegs a lot more and have full control over brake and clutch, so when the tracks are rough and technical, I feel like it’s definitely an advantage for me.

Talk about the race a little bit. Obviously, blitzing those whoops in the beginning was the best way through them, but did you have to make the decision to jump on the fly? Or did you know that was going to be the case?

I pretty much went out there and expected to jump right away. After seeing what Justin Cooper was doing in the heat race, that 2-3-4, that was kind of my goal. I went out and tried it on the sight lap, and when I got it clean in the race, it was definitely pretty fast to be able to scrub and get onto that triple onto the table pretty easily.