Raikkonen battles on

Kimi Raikkonen signalled his intent to keep the world championship fight alive by setting the fastest time when practice began for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps.

Raikkonen, whose title challenge could end this weekend, set the fastest time on a drying track to reinforce McLaren’s status as pre-race favourites.

The Finn set a best lap of one minute 48.206 seconds with McLaren test driver Alex Wurz just 0.010secs slower.

Giancarlo Fisichella was the sole Renault representative in first practice, with team-mate Fernando Alonso, who needs to score four points more than Raikkonen to wrap up the title, sitting out the session to protect his engine.

Fisichella was third-quickest but his best effort was nearly half a second down on Raikkonen’s. Toyota tester Ricardo Zonta took fourth.

Mark Webber claimed fifth for Williams, ahead of BAR-Honda’s Jenson Button. Michael Schumacher was two seconds off the pace in eighth for Ferrari while David Coulthard did not set a time in his Red Bull.

Heavy morning rain left the Spa-Francorchamps track slippery, even though the GP2 support series had helped remove the worst of the water in their morning practice session.

Formula One has not had a wet race since 2003 and rain is forecast for Sunday. Despite those predictions, few drivers took the opportunity to sample a damp track and only four had bothered to set a time after 40 minutes.

The usual suspects topped the timing sheets, with Wurz, Zonta and Vitantonio Liuzzi – test drivers for McLaren, Toyota and Red Bull respectively – clocking up the majority of the running.

Most of the race drivers opted to stay dry in their garages, keen to protect their engines under the threat of a 10-place grid penalty.

Minardi’s test driver Enrico Toccacelo became the first driver to come a cropper on the damp track, losing the back of his car under braking for Blanchimont and sliding through the gravel before nudging the tyre barrier.

As the track dried out more cars ventured out of the pits and Christijan Albers spun his Minardi in the same fashion as Toccacelo while Liuzzi misjudged his braking and missed the chicane at Les Combes.