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The Dutch 24-year-old, who leads Mercedes seven times world
champion Lewis Hamilton by 14 points with three races remaining,
produced a quickest time of one minute 23.723 seconds in a dusty
but uneventful session.
AlphaTauri's Pierre Gasly, who also has a Honda engine, was
second and 0.437 slower with a late quick run.
Valtteri Bottas was third on the timesheets, 0.471 off
Verstappen's pace, for Mercedes with Hamilton fourth.
Hamilton was 0.786 slower than his title rival, and also ran
wide over kerbs at turn 14 before pitting with a damaged front
wing.
"Are we slow on the straight or something?" the Briton asked
over the radio. "No, not particularly," race engineer Peter
Bonnington replied.
Japanese rookie Yuki Tsunoda made it two AlphaTauri drivers in
the top five with Ferrari's Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc
sixth and seventh.
The session took place with Formula One still waiting on
stewards to decide their response to a Mercedes request for a
review of an incident between Verstappen and Hamilton in Brazil
last Sunday.
The times and mid-afternoon temperatures were not representative
of the rest of the weekend, with Sunday's race held at night
under floodlights.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Shrivathsa
Sridhar)
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