Norris was on course to make it through into the second session comfortably but a yellow flag between Turns 15 and 16 meant he had to back off and the lap was ruined.
There will be questions as to whether Norris had to slow as much as he did, and he also made a mistake straight afterwards, running wide on to the kerb at the exit of the final corner.
And McLaren themselves say they will be raising with governing body the FIA whether there even needed to be a yellow flag at that point. The warning signal was for Esteban Ocon’s Alpine, which was moving slowly. That is normally cause only for a white flag, for which drivers do not need to back off.
Norris said: “The lap was easily good enough but there was a yellow flag so I had to back off.
“Following is pretty much impossible around here and overtaking is a lot worse than everyone thinks.
“I am not expecting much from 17th, but we will put in a good plan tonight and do our best of course. I have been wrong, and I hope there are plenty of chances, but I’m not expecting so.”
Verstappen said: “Some changes we made going into qualifying thinking to improve the car actually made it worse.
“From the first lap I did, I was not happy with the car and I just tried to drive around it. But when you are not confident and comfortable with the car on a street circuit, you cannot push to the limit.
“As soon as people start risking more I didn’t feel comfortable to attack because the car was very difficult, jumping a lot. Of course I went off in the last corner which also didn’t help. So all in all, quite disappointing.”
Briton Oliver Bearman made a strong debut for the Haas team on his stand-in outing in place of Kevin Magnussen, who has been suspended for this race after exceeding the permitted number of licence penalty points.
Bearman qualified 11th, three places and just over 0.2secs ahead of experienced team-mate Nico Hulkenberg, despite a crash in final practice.
“I was on the limit to get into Q3,” he said. “If it wasn’t for a mistake I made in the castle section, it would have been OK. Quite disappointed in myself. Not for qualifying, more for P3, where I hit the barrier and lost a lot of laps and experience.”
Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, who qualified 13th, faces a stewards investigation and likely disqualification after his car was found to have exceeded the fuel-flow limit during the session.