David Salom was finally able to start his first races of the 2015 eni FIM Superbike World Championship season in Thailand last weekend, having missed the Phillip Island season-opener a month earlier following his heavy crash in Superpole 2.

It resulted in another Superpole 2 appearance, for 11th position on the starting grid, before racing to eventual positions of eighth and ninth places in Sunday’s pair of races. However, the Spaniard is still looking for more as the World Championship returns to Europe with back-to-back meetings at MotorLand Aragon and Assen.

“We had a pretty good weekend in Thailand,” Salom begins. “Friday and Saturday were good, with the exception of Superpole, and Sunday was also positive. Clearly, missing Australia and also the last round of 2014 in Qatar meant we had to pick up the pace. In fact, we saw that towards the end of the second race I was actually running quicker than I had for the whole of the rest of the weekend – even faster than I had been on Saturday with the qualifying tyre! I got better throughout the weekend, but these electronics are new to me so I still need to learn more in order to better know how to manage the traction control and move forward with that.

“With a few more races, we’ll be able to fight for better positions. I did have fun at Buriram, though – especially in the second race when I battled with Troy Bayliss. He was quite difficult to pass and was racing very hard, but once I did pass him I was able to push on and go quicker. When you’re in a group, it can be very difficult.”

The Mallorcan also reveals that he is still feeling the effects of his Australia crash:

“With regards to the hand, that is no longer a problem. But I am still having some headaches. In fact, in Race 2 on Sunday the headache was actually distracting me, but I was able to fight through it and was going quicker by the end of the race. Hopefully I’ll be recovered further in another two weeks, so we’ll be all set for Aragon.”

Aragon will mark the first of two home events for Salom this year, with the second event to be staged in Spain coming up at Jerez in mid-September.