Verstappen will start ahead of Sainz and Lando Norris (McLaren) after the one-hour qualifying session, which is split into three segments with five cars each being knocked out in Q1 and Q2 before the top-10 shootout of Q3.
In tricky damp weather conditions on slick tyres, the session was red flagged after Valtteri Bottas spun his Alfa Romeo into the gravel, while Alex Albon (Williams) spun off at Turn 5, Nyck de Vries rotated his AlphaTauri and Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin also took a trip through the gravel.
Verstappen set the pace at 1m13.615s despite being involved in an impeding investigation with Pierre Gasly (Alpine), who then beat him with 1m13.471s as the times tumbled at the end. Norris and then Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) improved to the P1 spot, Hamilton lapping in 1m12.937s for the quickest lap of the session, as Verstappen slipped back to ninth.
Falling at the first hurdle were Bottas, Kevin Magnussen (Haas), Albon, Charles Leclerc – who suffered a disastrous session in his Ferrari – and Logan Sargeant (Williams).
Verstappen set the pace at 1m12.760s, just 0.016s faster than Norris’s McLaren, as his Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez struggled for pace and went off on the opening lap of his final run at Turn 7.
On his final attempt, Perez failed to make the top 10 by 0.051s. In another bizarre moment, the Mercedes cars collided on the run to Turn 1, while passing Sainz’s Ferrari, with Hamilton’s car losing his front wing endplate.
Knocked out at this point along with Perez were George Russell (Mercedes), Zhou Guanyu (Alfa) and the AlphaTauris of de Vries and Yuki Tsunoda.
On the first runs, Verstappen lapped in 1m12.272s, almost a second clear of the opposition on fresh tyres as opposed to everyone else on used rubber.
On the final runs, Verstappen didn’t need to improve, as Sainz took second – 0.462s in arrears – from Norris, Gasly (who is likely to get a grid penalty for impeding), Hamilton, Lance Stroll (Aston Martin), Esteban Ocon (Alpine), Nico Hulkenberg (Haas), Alonso (whose car suffered damage in its early off) and Oscar Piastri (McLaren).