Russell, who said he was happy to have ended a run of difficult form but could not explain why, took a unilateral decision not to do a preparation lap after his out lap on his final run.
He said he had a “gut feeling” that it was the best approach, but the team had insisted on a prep lap and had fuelled the car for the extra mileage.
“[The time loss for the extra fuel weight is] such a small number,” said Russell, “but it’s bigger than the gap to pole. Nevertheless, I’m just happy to be up here.”
Verstappen said traffic with another car is what led to his loss of time.
“Already going into (Turn) 12 I had a car very close to me and I already lost time there with the dirty air,” he said.
“And then going into the hairpin, instead of going on the left, I had one car on my right where you normally want to open up the corner. So its a bit of an awkward angle you have to go into the hairpin.
“Plus you lose your reference on the right-hand side where you are constantly looking. It’s a difficult corner to get right, that killed my lap. The most promising thing is how we turned it around as in practice I was not that happy and we turned it around, I was in the fight for pole.”
McLaren’s Lando Norris had looked in contention for pole, fastest in the second session and on the first runs in the final session, when he was third fastest behind Leclerc and Verstappen.
But he failed to improve on his final lap and had to be satisfied fight sixth.
“Just not quick enough that’s all,” said Norris. “The lap was incredible in Q2 to put me P1. That was very unrealistic in terms of achieving that again in Q3.
“I am pretty happy with P6, can’t ask a lot more and pretty happy with the job I did with the car I have.”
Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar, Racing Bulls pair Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly completed the top 10.
Fernando Alonso looked to be in contention for his best qualifying of the year for Aston Martin when he went fastest on his first lap of the session ahead of a number of cars that for most of the season have been ahead of him.
But his engine suffered a water leak in the energy recovery system as he started his second attempt, when he was still lying third, and he was ordered to stop the car on track.
Alonso’s frustration after a year of poor performance and reliability from the Honda engine was clear in an interview with the official television channel afterwards, when he said a total of nine words in answer to four questions.
In those words, he confirmed it had been an engine problem, said “it was” a good opportunity and it was “correct” that the car has been looking good all weekend – but that he could not do anything in the race “from the back”.