Verstappen will start ahead of Lando Norris (McLaren) and George Russell (Mercedes) in Sunday’s race after the one-hour qualifying session on Friday, which is split into three segments with five cars each being knocked out in Q1 and Q2 before the top-10 shootout of Q3.
Logan Sargeant caused a red flag in Q3 when he shunted his Williams, and a second was required for Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Qualifying began on a soaked track surface and all cars ran intermediate tyres throughout.
Verstappen was one of many to suffer early offs into the gravel at Turn 1, complaining he had “no grip”.
Alex Albon set 1m20.939s in his Williams just before the rain returned, 0.026s faster than Verstappen and three tenths up on the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
Falling at the first hurdle were Zhou Guanyu (Alfa Romeo), Esteban Ocon (Alpine), Kevin Magnussen (Haas), Valtteri Bottas (Alfa) and Liam Lawson, 2.4s off the pace subbing for the injured Daniel Ricciardo at AlphaTauri.
The track was still wet, so all cars ran on inters again, but it dried quickly towards the end.
Verstappen topped the session by half a second with 1m18.856s, ahead of Piastri and Albon.
Knocked out at this point were Lance Stroll, whose Aston Martin was pipped by Sargeant’s Williams in the dying moments by 0.054s, Pierre Gasly (Alpine), Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes), Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri) and Nico Hulkenberg (Haas).
The track was ready for slicks at last, with Albon setting the pace at 1m15.743s before team-mate Sargeant crashed heavily at Turn 2, causing a red flag.
After a lengthy delay, McLaren took a 1-2 at the resumption with Norris ahead of Piastri on 1m12.049s, with Verstappen three tenths in arrears. But another red flag was required soon after when Leclerc understeered off into the tyrewall at Turn 9.
The session restarted with four minutes to go, with Verstappen lowering the bar to 1m10.567s. Norris got to within 0.537s of that, with George Russell going third for Mercedes, ahead of Albon, Fernando Alonso (Aston), Carlos Sainz (Ferrari), Sergio Perez (Red Bull), Piastri, Leclerc and Sargeant.