Hamilton hopes to limit crash effect

The team had a substantial number of development parts that it wanted to evaluate in practice today, but lost a lot of track time when Hamilton crashed at Degner halfway through first practice.

The repairs to the car took until the closing stages of practice two to complete, and he only managed four flying laps in the afternoon.

Hamilton was full of praise for McLaren's efforts in rebuilding the car.

"The guys did an incredible job, they really had to work so hard, but they are so good and they worked so hard to get the car out and we did the last 10 minutes of the second session," he said.

"But a lot of time was lost. Nevertheless, tomorrow's another day and it's going to rain, so I guess everyone's going to start again tomorrow."

Although McLaren admitted before the event that it was on the "very lean edge" of parts availability given the pace of its development work, Hamilton hopes that he can still use the latest upgrades in qualifying.

"The guys are working very hard to make sure they're fixed for tomorrow, which I'm sure they'll do," he said. "Hopefully we'll have an updated wing tomorrow and it will be no problem."

He said it had not really been possible to judge the car's form around Suzuka in the little running he managed.

"I literally just did four timed laps, so I was just getting the feeling and trying to get back into the groove with things," said Hamilton. "I didn't really get a feeling of where the car is exactly."

Having retired from both the Italian and Singapore GPs due to contact, Hamilton hoped today's crash would be his last incident for a while. He accepted full responsibility for the accident.

"I was probably pushing too hard, too early maybe," he said. "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."