Having missed out on pole to Lewis Hamilton by just 0.003s, Verstappen complained after the session of his RB19 being "all over the shop" and struggled with a lack of feeling at the wheel.
Verstappen's fortunes in the race were not nearly as close run, as he secured a crushing victory in Hungary over Lando Norris with a 33.7-second advantage.
Reflecting on his race, Verstappen suggested that the difficulties preparing the car for qualifying actually yielded a better baseline for the race. He added that it was not intentional to sacrifice one-lap pace.
"We tried a few different things with the car in terms of set-up and qualifying, which probably worked very well for today," Verstappen explained, in response to a question from Autosport about his conflicting emotions over the set-up.
"But, I mean, we tried so many things throughout the whole weekend and it never worked on one lap.
"So it might have also been that we just didn't make our tyre work well over one lap because, uh, you know, in the race everything heats up and it runs hotter for a long period of time.
"You need probably a very different balance for that. And basically, yesterday I was understeering a lot. Today it's warmer, both ambient and track. So probably it all came to me anyway, and that's why I probably had such a nice balance today."
Source: Autosport