Lewis Hamilton takes the blame after running into more trouble

While Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber showed Red Bull will be the team to beat on Sunday, posting the two fastest times at Suzuka, Hamilton had a day to forget.

The British driver crashed halfway through first practice and, despite frantic repairs by the McLaren mechanics, could only make the last 10 minutes of the second session.

Hamilton sustained major damage to the front end of his car in a shunt at the Degner Curve. He ran wide on the kerb before taking to the gravel and crunching heavily into the tyre barrier, removing his left-front wheel.

The error was his third in as many races following his costly retirements in Italy and Singapore, which have left him third in the title race - 20 points behind leader Webber.

"I was probably pushing too hard, too early maybe," said the 2008 champion. "It wasn't even that big an off, it was just unfortunate that the gravel was really very slippery at that point.

"You've seen a couple of other people went off there and got away with it. They say bad things come in threes and I hope that's the case and it's over and done with."

Hamilton's late cameo brought him eight further laps of running to go with the nine he managed in session one, although his best time of 1min 33.481sec was more than two seconds shy of Vettel and left him 13th.

Vettel won this race from pole position last year and he set the pace today finishing 0.395 of a second ahead of Webber with Renault's Robert Kubica third.

The Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa took fourth and fifth spot with the Spaniard just under nine-tenths of a second slower than Vettel.

Hamilton's team-mate Jenson Button, who also suffered a hairy moment at Degner in practice one but emerged unscathed, was sixth.