Verstappen just held onto his pole advantage at the start, seeing off the challenge of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who will start from pole position for Sunday’s US GP.
Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) passed Leclerc on the exit of the first corner and chased Verstappen hard in the early stages. But Verstappen eased clear to lead by almost 3s at half distance and extended his buffer to win by over 9s.
Verstappen held his pole position advantage on the uphill run to Turn 1, moving across on fellow front row starter Leclerc, which compromised the Ferrari driver’s line, so Hamilton passed him on the exit of Turn 1 despite running wide.
With the majority of the grid running medium tyres, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz started on softs and snatched fourth from McLaren’s Lando Norris at the hairpin.
Hamilton hovered in Verstappen’s DRS range for the opening five laps, as Leclerc fell away in third, before he too began to drop off the leader’s pace. Verstappen then became a speck in the distance for Hamilton over the remaining laps.
Red Bull’s Sergio Perez snatched sixth from Oscar Piastri (McLaren) on lap three, with George Russell (Mercedes) also getting ahead at the following turn. Russell copped a 5s penalty for leaving the track and gaining and advantage as he passed Piastri, much to his chagrin.
Norris attacked Sainz just before the halfway point, passing him for fourth on lap 10, and Perez did likewise a tour later.
Russell was next to catch Sainz, and they swapped sixth position at Turn 1, but Russell couldn’t make the move stick in the closing stages.
Pierre Gasly finished eighth on the road for Alpine, after pulling off a huge outbraking move on Piastri at Turn 1 on lap five. He gained a spot from Russell after finishing within 5s of the penalized Mercedes.
Verstappen beat Leclerc to pole by 0.055s despite a spin in the closing moments of SQ2. Hamilton qualified third, ahead of Norris.
Verstappen set the fastest time of 1m35.997s on the mandated medium tyres, 0.002s ahead of Leclerc.
Falling at the first hurdle were the Haas duo of Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo), Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri) and Logan Sargeant (Williams).
Verstappen set the quickest time of 1m35.181s, again on mandated mediums, before he spun at Turn 9.
Knocked out at this point were comeback kid Daniel Ricciardo (AlphaTauri), Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin), Esteban Ocon (Alpine), Lance Stroll (Aston) and Zhou Guanyu (Alfa Romeo).
Verstappen didn’t make a mistake when it really mattered, lapping in 1m34.538s to shade Leclerc by 0.055s.
Hamilton was just another 0.014s behind Leclerc – and 0.069s away from pole – to start third, ahead of Norris, Piastri, Sainz, Perez, Russell, Albon and Gasly.
After the session, Russell was demoted to 11th on the grid due to impeding Leclerc earlier.