Reigning MCE British Superbike Champion Shane Byrne will return to action on Thursday at the Donington Park official test just a couple of weeks after a big crash at Almeria saw him undergo surgery on his left hand.

The PBM Kawasaki man has kept the extent of his injuries under wraps but during a stint on Eurosport over the weekend, Byrne was visibly nursing the hand. He has also been having treatment on his leg, which took a pounding in the tumble.

“It feels like a lot of my past few weeks has been spent in the hyperbaric chamber! You always have that moment where you come to rest in the gravel when you know you have injured something and the first thing on your mind is 'when can I be back'. I knew I wasn't going to be back out in Spain, but then the target had to be the official test although that was only a few weeks away,” he said.

"I am probably not going to be brand spanking new but it is in my interest to get some laps done there ahead of the opening round. Don't get me wrong, I won't want to do lots of laps if the conditions aren't good, but in doing so I will then be on the back foot as my pre-season testing has been about 40 laps of Almeria. Don't get me wrong, it could be a lot worse, but the crash wasn't ideal as I hadn't tried the new components for 2015.

"Me and the team worked really hard over the winter and now I am working even harder to be race fit. I got a bit of an infection in my hand so I need to get that sorted with some antibiotics, but the season won't wait for me so I just need to get on with it. I can't wait to get started and I will have done everything possible to be ready for the first races of the season."