All 20 drivers wasted no time getting out as the condensed sprint race format only leaves teams a single hour practice to nail down their set-ups for the entire weekend.
Because of the lack of practice time, duties were split between race runs and just a handful of qualifying sims, with all teams kicking off proceedings on a dry Interlagos circuit on Pirelli's hard tyre compound.
Red Bull's world champion Verstappen immediately set a lap of 1m13.950s on hard tyres to go top ahead of team-mate Sergio Perez, who is looking to rebound from a heartbreaking Lap 1 crash in his Mexico home race.
Both drivers soon improved on the same compound with Verstappen's 1m13.138s putting him four tenths ahead of the Mexican, following by Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton, Haas man Nico Hulkenberg and the second Mercedes of George Russell at the 15-minute mark, who later leapfrogged his team-mate into third.
After 23 minutes Yuki Tsunoda lit up the timing screens in the AlphaTauri, the Japanese driver stopping the clocks at 1m28.802s as the first of the medium runners.
But just before the halfway mark Tsunoda was bested by Verstappen and then Russell, who led with a 1m11.865s on the same medium compound, before Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso split Russell and Verstappen in second while still using hards.
Source: Autosport