Verstappen got the perfect getaway from second on the grid to pip pole-getter George Russell into the first turn. Norris, starting third, swept beneath both, but the McLaren driver conceded the lead to the Dutchman rather than risk trying to cling to his outside at turn 2.
From second place Norris pushed the reigning champion hard, the two never separated by more than two seconds as they made a break from the chasing pack.
But the race unravelled not through strategy or an overtake by a wing mirror peeling itself free from Thai driver Alex Albon’s Williams.
The freelancing piece of bodywork landed in the middle of pit straight and presented as an obvious hazard to oncoming cars as they hit 320-kilometres per hour before the braking zone.
Curiously race control opted against a safety car or virtual safety car to clean the track, choosing instead to use double yellow flags to caution drivers approaching the debris.
Norris, however, missed the flags and sped through the caution zone at full throttle - as detected by an eagle-eyed Verstappen, who noted how much closer the Briton was to his gearbox as they exited the first turn.
The matter was escalated to the stewards, and on lap 40 of 57 Norris was slapped with a draconian 10-second stop-go penalty, requiring him to enter pit lane and stop in his pit box for 10 seconds without work being undertaken before rejoining the race.
It dumped him from victory contention to the back of the back, from where he was able to recover to 10th with the fastest lap.
With Norris out of the picture, Verstappen was unencumbered in cruising to his ninth victory of the season and first as a four-time champion.
His first victory in the dry since June, Verstappen praised his team for turning the car around from an uncompetitive eighth-place showing in the sprint to a comfortable victory contender.
“It was a very good race,” he said. “It’s been a while in the dry to be this competitive, and I’m very proud of everyone within the team to turn it around within a day, so they definitely also deserve this victory.”
Into the void left by Norris slipped Charles Leclerc, who beat Oscar Piastri to the place thanks also to the loose wing mirror.
The mirror had been left unattended on the road for five laps when an unfortunate Valtteri Bottas ran it over, exploding it into a mist of carbon fibre. Shortly afterwards both Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz had picked up punctures, finally forcing race control to deploy the safety car to clean the circuit.
It was bad news for Piastri, who had just made his pit stop, his McLaren team apparently convinced that race control was firm in its decision not to interrupt the race.
Leclerc hadn’t yet stopped, and his service while the field was circulating behind the pace car shuffled him ahead of the Australian, a position that he would never relinquish.
The Ferrari driver, whose runner-up finish helped Ferrari close the gap to McLaren to just 21 points in the constructors standings, said the team had exceeded its own expectations at a circuit that doesn’t suit its car.
“Finishing second after such a weekend, where the track characteristics are very far off from the optimal of the track characteristics we need for our car, is a surprise,” he said. “As a team it’s been a positive weekend.
“We exceeded our expectations because, coming into the weekend, I kind of expected to lose a bit of points compared to McLaren here; however, we recovered some, so that’s good.”
Piastri thought he had done enough to finish what became second place early in the race, when he forced Russell, then third, to make an early pit stop. The Briton suffered a slow service, dropping him into the field, but Piastri’s pace once unbottled from behind the Mercedes was fast enough to get him clear anyway, only for the timing of the safety car to lock him in behind Leclerc.
On a day McLaren had thought it might be able to win its first teams title since 1998, Piastri admitted he was disappointed to have lost ground to Ferrari on the table.
“It’s nice to end up on the podium, but not quite the result we’re looking for,” he said. “Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t.”
Russell finished fourth, the safety car helping him return up the order after his disastrously slow first stop, though a five-second penalty for a safety car infringement almost saw him drop a place to the superb Pierre Gasly behind him, who scored a vital 10 points for Alpine, which is now five points clear of Haas in the lucrative battle for sixth in the constructors standings.
Sainz recovered to sixth after his puncture, though a slow pit stop - his car was dropped from its jacks before his front-right tyre had been changes - cost him nine seconds and a potential podium place.
Fernando Alonso finished a strong seventh to score Aston Martin’s first points since September’s Singapore Grand Prix, while Zhou Guanyu scored his and his Sauber’s team first points of the season with a gritty eighth place.
Kevin Magnussen was ninth for Haas in his penultimate grand prix, while the penalised Norris recovered to 10th.
Valtteri Bottas finished 11th ahead of a despondent Lewis Hamilton, whose race was undone by two penalties - for jumping the start and speeding in pit lane - and a puncture, the seven-time champion willing his miserable season to end.
RB teammates Yuki Tsunoda finished an uncompetitive 13th and 14th ahead of Albon, who gambled on soft tyres late in the race only for them to rapidly expire, leaving him cemented to the back.
Nico Hülkenberg and Sergio Pérez independently spun themselves out of the race just after two-thirds distance.
Lance Stroll was penalised for crashing into Albon on the first lap before retiring with undisclosed handling issues.
Esteban Ocon’s race ended at the first corner after locking up and colliding with Hülkenberg and then ricocheting into the luckless Franco Colapinto, who also retired on the spot.