The Dutchman had reeled off the fastest lap times in all three practice sessions, and had headed Q1 by half a second over team-mate Perez as the result of qualifying appeared to be a foregone conclusion.
Verstappen suffered a slide on his first bid to set a competitive lap in Q2 and backed out of it to prepare for another effort but, as he spooled up, lost drive during the middle sector and reported that he could no longer accelerate.
