Verstappen qualified in fourth position behind teammate Daniel Ricciardo, as the Red Bull duo finished around four tenths of a second behind pole-sitter Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes.

Red Bull also qualified comfortably ahead of Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel.

"Definitely on this track where we did not expect to be that close, we were quite close," said Verstappen.

"So we can definitely be pleased with this qualifying because even we were in front of the Ferrari quite comfortably, and that was very important for us."

He added: "I am in general very happy because I think it was a very good qualifying, and also for me the first time on this track with a F1 car, I think we did a good job.

"It is just a shame in the last sector I ran over the sausage curb and lost a lot of time between the last two corners. But at the end we did a very good qualifying."

Verstappen remains hopeful that his team can target Mercedes in tomorrow's race instead of having to defend from Ferrari.

"Hopefully we won't need to cover like we had to do in Hungary. Hopefully we can follow the Mercedes cars and try to push them."

"It all looked very promising; hopefully we can have the same balance in the car tomorrow. So we see. It will be an interesting race.

Ricciardo believes Red Bull's long-race pace on Friday showed the team can be even stronger in the race than it was in qualifying.

"I think on low fuel yesterday Mercedes had a pretty big buffer over everyone and on long run pace we looked closer," said Ricciardo.

"That gave us some optimism for Sunday. Today we got closer on one-lap pace, so let's see if it translates into something tomorrow."

Additional reporting by Jonathan Noble