But he found himself nearly nine-tenths off Vettel's ultimate pace and suffered an off-track excursion during the final minutes.
But when asked about the move — it is illegal to gain position through an off-track excursion — Raikkonen said it provided no advantage.
Hamilton's off-track excursion had been to an extent pre-empted by Bernie Ecclestone, increasingly sounding like almost a fringe group of one in F1, even before the race weekend began.
And had Raikkonen not passed him near the start of the race after the Finn profited from a felicitous off-track excursion and then a safety car period after a pileup that took out some other contenders, Fisichella would have won the race.
And Vettel had a brief off-track excursion at Spoon Curve before rejoining.
The Ferraris were fastest in the first session; Räikkönen was quickest with a time of 1 20.649, ahead of Massa, who recovered from a spin and an off-track excursion on his first two laps to take second.
To come so close as a rookie was unrivalled, but in 2007 and again in 2008, his innate speed, yielding nine victories, was offset by intemperate performances, including crashes and other off-track excursions, that underlined how much he still had to learn.
There were a number of incidents in the session, including off-track excursions for Lotus driver Romain Grosjean and Sauber's Esteban Gutierrez.
Räikkönen, Piquet, Coulthard, Bourdais and Webber all had off-track excursions with little damage done; a Fisichella spin at Stavelot forced the session to be halted for ten minutes while the debris was removed and water was cleared from the track.
It belongs now to this departing Olympic colossus, the man who forgot to tie his shoelaces before that gold medal run in Beijing, the prodigy chastised as lazy, the teenager whose high jinks included spending a night hiding inside a cupboard at the former prime minister's house during a track team excursion.
