Verstappen collided with Leclerc and twice with Mercedes' George Russell after the safety car restart.
The 18-year-old, preparing for only his sixth Grand Prix weekend, lapped with a best time of one minute 26.482 seconds to pip McLaren's championship leader Oscar Piastri by 0.045 seconds.
Formula One leader Oscar Piastri put his McLaren on pole position for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola on Saturday
Lando Norris won the Austrian Grand Prix and revived his Formula One title bid after fending off championship-leading McLaren team mate Oscar Piastri under race-long pressure on Sunday.
F1 leader Oscar Piastri seized pole position from teammate and title rival Lando Norris by a hefty margin as dominant McLaren locked out the front row in Spanish Grand Prix.
Days after the Red Bull driver and partner Kelly Piquet welcomed daughter Lily, his first child, the four-times champion set a blistering lap of one minute 26.204 seconds around the Hard Rock Stadium.
George Russell took Mercedes' first win of the Formula One season in Canada on Sunday while McLaren's Oscar Piastri went 22 points clear in the championship after teammate Lando Norris smashed into him and retired.
Drivers returned to the pits, under a darkening sky, with engineers using torches in the garages before back-up generators came on and the session resumed about an hour later.
Lando Norris lucked in to win a rain-hit and crash-strewn Miami Grand Prix sprint race in a McLaren one-two on Saturday.
Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris topped the times for McLaren as four red flags, two caused by trackside grass fires, wreaked havoc with the second practice session for the Japanese Grand Prix on Friday.
Carlos Sainz completed a double race distance for previously struggling Williams and pushed his Ferrari successor Lewis Hamilton off the top of the testing
But there were no bold statements on race day as he struggled to take a point and his team mate Charles Leclerc laboured to an eighth-place finish.
World champion Max Verstappen put Red Bull on pole position for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in dramatic style on Saturday.
Lewis Hamilton smashed the Shanghai circuit lap record on his way to a stunning first sprint race pole for Ferrari in China on Friday.
Australian Oscar Piastri roared back from season-opening disappointment in his home race by winning the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix from pole position in a McLaren one-two with championship-leading teammate Lando Norris on Sunday.
Red Bull's Max Verstappen won the Qatar Grand Prix on Sunday with the battle for the constructor's title going down to next weekend's Abu Dhabi season-ender
Australian driver Oscar Piastri, 23, emerged victorious in his first ever Formula One race at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday.
Lando Norris won the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday to deliver McLaren's first Formula One constructors' title since 1998
Oscar Piastri won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and sent McLaren top of the constructors' standings in a race that finished with a virtual safety car after a penultimate lap collision between Ferrari's Carlos Sainz and Red Bull's Sergio Perez.
Bring out the popcorn, Sukanya Verma promises that there's *tons* to catch up on OTT this week.
Spain's Pablo Martin took his second European Tour victory when he defeated South African Charl Schwartzel by one stroke to win the Alfred Dunhill Championship on Sunday.
Four-time Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel will race for Aston Martin, the new name for the Canadian-owned Racing Point team, on a multi-year deal after leaving Ferrari at the end of the season.
Lando Norris led a McLaren front row sweep in qualifying for the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Saturday
The win was a first for Ferrari in Mexico since 1990 and fourth of Carlos Sainz's career.
Max Verstappen, who could seal his fourth successive championship on Saturday, will line up fifth on the starting grid
McLaren are leading the constructor's championship but are only 29 points ahead of Ferrari, with Leclerc an obvious threat and team mate Carlos Sainz qualifying fifth and Mercedes' George Russell sixth.
McLaren's Lando Norris dominated the Singapore Grand Prix from start to finish on Sunday to take another chunk out of Max Verstappen's Formula One championship lead.
Verstappen took pole position for the Saudi Arabian Formula One Grand Prix on Friday with Ferrari's Charles Leclerc qualifying alongside on the front row.
McLaren's Lando Norris hailed the best qualifying lap of his career after beating F1 leader Max Verstappen to pole position at the US Grand Prix.
World champion Max Verstappen took the first pole position of the Formula One season in Bahrain on Friday.
Red Bull's Verstappen, who had been on pole at Zandvoort every year since the circuit returned in 2021 and has yet to be beaten there, will still line up alongside the Briton on the front row.
The final phase of qualifying was halted, with only Piastri and Haas' Nico Hulkenberg having set times, when Sainz slammed backwards into the barriers at the final corner as he prepared to start his flying lap.
'All professional players have been affected by these illegal rules (in force since 2001!) and can therefore now seek compensation for their losses.'
Red Bull's Max Verstappen dealt Lando Norris a shattering blow in their Formula One title battle by winning a wet and chaotic Sao Paulo Grand Prix from 17th on the grid.
Max Verstappen held off a late charge by McLaren's Lando Norris to win the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix
Lord Martin Rees, president of The Royal Society, presented the medal and a scroll to Kalam in the presence of a distinguished gathering, including NRI industrialist Lord Swaraj Paul, Lord Karan Billimoria, chief of the Cobra Beer, Acting High Commissioner of India to the UK Asoke Mukerjee and Lord Meghnad Desai, a leading economist, at the Royal Society.
Ferrari's Carlos Sainz won the Australian Grand Prix on Sunday in a triumphant return two weeks after appendicitis surgery as Red Bull's World champion Max Verstappen suffered his first retirement in two years.
Formula One world champion Max Verstappen took pole position for a third straight year at the Japanese Grand Prix on Saturday, with Sergio Perez qualifying a close second to ensure a Red Bull front-row lockout.
Lando Norris put McLaren on pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix on Saturday
Leclerc took pole in Monaco in 2021, but did not start the race due to a driveshaft failure, and 2022 when he ended up fourth.