Verstappen could only go 16th quickest while his team-mate Sergio Perez also struggled with Red Bull notably electing to run hard tyres for all of their long runs, rather than the softs which helped Ferrari to the top of the leaderboard.
Haas were the surprise story of the session as their upgraded front wing appeared to work wonders, with Nico Hulkenberg fourth quickest.
With a return to the sprint format this weekend, teams only had one hour to fine-tune their setups for qualifying later on Friday evening.
Here are the timesheets from all the practice action at Interlagos.