The four-time world champion, who started from second on the grid, opened the race with two stints on soft tyres that left him with a lot of work to do as he was stuck with a two-stop strategy.
Runaway world championship leader Kimi Antonelli won convincingly for Mercedes ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and now needs only two points in Mexico next weekend to become F1’s youngest champion.
Verstappen had hoped to compete with the 20-year-old Italian but was ultimately unable to match his overall speed and performance.
“I think our overall pace was not good enough and probably the tyres that we had available were not the right ones,” he said.
“It’s something that we have to understand because I think in the last few races it was always working well for us.
