Hofmann reveals visibility problems

The Pramac D'Antin rider took an excellent fifth place in the rain-hit French Grand Prix - but has confessed that he nearly hit trouble late on because he could not see through his badly misted visor.

"I had a lot of big moments in the race," said the German. "I couldn't see anything because my visor wasn't really prepared for wet conditions.

"At one point I was approaching Valentino (Rossi) to overtake him, and I was having to open and close my visor on the main straight so I could see. That didn't really feel good, as I nearly crashed."

Hoffman only perfected a wet set-up for his Ducati at the post-Spanish Grand Prix test at Jerez on March 26, and was one of the first to pit and switch bikes in Sunday's race.

"I came in first as I saw the drops getting bigger and bigger on the screen," he explained. "My team were telling me to stay out, telling me I was crazy, but just as I got used to the wet tyres, and got them up to temperature, it started raining even more."

As the rain fell harder, the former 250cc rider said he had fun with the bike in the monsoon conditions.

"The last five laps were very hard indeed. The 'wet' mapping may well be to reduce the revs in the gears, but I was revving it's head off as I was aquaplaning all the time up the home straight. I was flat out in top on the limiter.

"After this race weekend when everything went wrong, we had to make a right decision sometime and we managed to do that. It's great."