Qualifying started with the historic Brazilian circuit under threat of rain, with storm clouds gathering on the horizon and menacing at the start of the top 10 shootout.
The hour up to that point had been dry, but a crack of lightning and the roar of thunder was the portent for a deluge. Drivers queued at the end of the pit lane, desperate to be the first out to get in a lap before the rain arrived.
The Aston Martin teammates were first on the road, and Lance Stroll pipped Fernando Alonso after their first laps.
Lewis Hamilton followed, but his Mercedes could not best the green machines.
Verstappen barged past George Russell exiting the long pit lane to set his lap fourth and within the purple sectors he rocketed to provisional pole as conditions started deteriorating.
Russell came next but couldn’t get close. Charles Leclerc crossed the line and moved up to second, but he was more than a quarter of a second adrift.
The wind was gusting wildly now and the rain was beginning to intensify. Lando Norris was more than a second off the pace, and Carlos Sainz wasn’t much better.
But it was Oscar Piastri who confirmed the circuit had got away from the drivers, sliding helplessly off the road at Juncao at the bottom of the hill, abandoning his own lap and running that of Sergio Pérez immediately behind him.
The 10 drivers returned to pit lane, but there would be no second chances. The heavens opened, submerging the track and forcing an early end to the session with Verstappen on pole.
“We lined up to go out for Q3 and you could see the sky was just black,” he said. “I was like, ‘Wow, if that rain hits, it’s going to be a lot’.
“We went for the lap, the first sector felt alright, and then the rest of the lap felt shocking.
“The wind increased a lot, and it changed direction with a tailwind in the middle sector, and the car was just sliding all over the place.
“I’ve never experienced something like that, that it’s such a big influence on car balance. But you could also see the weather incoming was quite extreme.”
Leclerc said he’d never encountered whether like that in Formula 1.
“I’ve never experienced that in my career,” he said. “The wind change was crazy. There was just absolutely no grip from Sector 2 onwards, which was extremely confusing, because you had no idea where the balance would be in the corner you would get into, and it made things very interesting.
“I was thinking of coming in at the end of the lap. It felt so bad that I was like, ‘Okay, this is not good enough, I’m P10 for sure’. But luckily I wasn’t, and second place is good.”
Stroll qualified a season-high third, pipping teammate Alonso for just the third time this season for a grand prix and snapping a dire two-race streak of form for Aston Martin.
“I don’t think we’re third on paper,” he said candidly. “I think we managed to execute well, that’s for sure.
“I think we did well going early at the front of the queue and getting in our lap early before the rain came.
“I think we made our own luck.”
Hamilton qualified fifth ahead of Russell, but the latter was penalised two places for obstructing the pit lane exit trying to build a gap in traffic for a lap in Q1.
Norris and Sainz were promoted to sixth and seventh in his place, with Russell set to start eighth ahead of Pérez and Piastri.
Nico Hülkenberg qualified 11th ahead of Alpine teammates Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, though the two Frenchmen were both penalised two places for the same clumsy offence as Russell, with drivers having been specifically warned to keep left in the narrow pit exit if they intended to delay the start of their laps.
Kevin Magnussen was promoted to 12th to join his Haas teammate on the sixth row ahead of Thai driver Alex Albon and the penalised Ocon and Gasly.
AlphaTauri teammates Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo were eliminated 16th and 17th, a stark comedown from the team’s Mexico Q3 heroics last week.
Valtteri Bottas wills tart 18th ahead of Logan Sargeant and Zhou Guanyu.