Lewis Hamilton's Japanese Grand Prix weekend got off to the worst possible start today as the McLaren driver crashed out of the opening practice session at Suzuka.

The Briton is bidding to re-ignite his championship bid after back-to-back retirements in Italy and Singapore but an apparent error on his tenth lap saw him lose half of the opening 90-minute session, costing him valuable set-up time.

Entering the second part of the Degner Curve, Hamilton ran wide on the kerb before taking to the gravel and crunching heavily into the tyre barrier, removing his left-front wheel.

Hamilton, who trails championship leader Mark Webber by 20 points with four races remaining, was quickly out of the car and cut a forlorn figure as he waited in the underpass on the exit of the corner for the trackside marshals to clear away the stricken MP4-25.

With just two minutes left in the session, Hamilton's team-mate Jenson Button also had a lurid moment through Degner, his car pitching up wildly off the kerb and sliding towards the scene of Hamilton's accident.

Fortunately for Button, who ended the session down in 12th place, he stopped short of the barriers and was able to get his car back to the garage, where the McLaren team will no doubt be working to improve the balance of their cars ahead of second practice later on Friday.

Hamilton had just set the fastest first sector time of the session at the time of his accident, and was running second to Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, who won this race last year and set an ominous pace once again.

Vettel topped the timesheets with a time of one minute 32.585 seconds while his team-mate Webber, who leads the drivers' standings by 11 points from Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, finished second, 0.048secs down on the German.

Alonso, who has won the last two races but warned that Ferrari were overdue a bad result, could manage only 13th place, over one and a half seconds off the pace, while Robert Kubica was the only driver to hold a candle to the dominance of the Red Bulls as he took third for the Enstone-based Renault F1 team, just over half a second down on Vettel.

Silverstone-based Force India's team driver Adrian Sutil was an impressive fourth ahead of Hamilton, while Rubens Barrichello was the first of the Grove-built Williams cars in sixth and the Brazilian's team-mate Nico Hulkenberg was seventh, while Michael Schumacher, driving for Brackely-based Mercedes, Nick Heidfeld (Sauber) and Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) completed the top ten.