Verstappen’s pole lap appeared to be further confirmation of Red Bull’s resurgence after his dominant win in Malaysia but he faces an investigation for overtaking under yellow flags shown before the first session was stopped for the Perez incident.
The four-time champion said he had not believed pole was possible before qualifying.
“We have some difficulties with the car in ride, as we know,” he said, “but at least when we went to the soft tyres (in the final session) it made the car a bit more stable in places where before you were a bit unsure.
“I did not expect this but you take it, I’m happy for sure. Qualifying tomorrow is still the main goal and for us the start is always a critical point but at least a positive end to our day.”
Russell’s performance compared with that of Antonelli raises further doubts about the efficacy of the Mercedes upgrade introduced in Malaysia.
It was their biggest car update since the Canadian Grand Prix in June but team boss Toto Wolff said at Sepang that it had appeared to take them backwards rather than forwards.
Mercedes split the car spec here in Singapore in an attempt to better understand its performance but Antonelli ended the session 0.573secs behind Russell.
The Briton said: “As a team there is still nothing telling us it isn’t working but it’s all driven by the stopwatch and, yeah, the stopwatch hasn’t been great for the upgrade yet. Maybe tomorrow’s a different day.”
Antonelli, who leads the championship by 84 points going into the weekend, said: “Already FP1 I was struggling and there is still a lot to understand about this package. Really the car is very difficult, very unpredictable, very difficult to put a lap together. It’s a shame. I was coming with high hopes but so far it has been very difficult.
“It’s going to be a difficult weekend unless we can pull something out tomorrow. Other than that it is going very tricky. I don’t really see where we can find 0.7secs but you never know.”
Wolff said before sprint qualifying: “The new car seems to be a little more tricky to drive. Not saying it’s necessarily slower, because there will be goodness in it, but maybe we haven’t just found a way of putting it all together and tuning it. The older car is a bit more stable, grippy, but that is really just one data point.”
Leclerc was 0.243secs off pole, and ruing what he said was Ferrari “losing a little bit of our raw performance” in the past three or four races.
However, he added: “Still I feel there is potential in the car and maybe tomorrow we can be there or thereabouts in fighting for pole.”
Hamilton said: “We did a slightly different run plan to the others. It was my choice, but I think we got that wrong. But ultimately, the car was very oversteery on that lap. If the rears [tyres] are not ready or they are overheating, it’s difficult to say. But it was very snappy and oversteery in the lap overall.”