In Melbourne Verstappen took over provisional pole from Ferrari's Charles Leclerc with his second run in Q3, but with his final effort Leclerc struck back to take his second pole of the 2022 season by 0.286s.
Despite qualifying on the front row Verstappen admitted he hadn't felt comfortable in the Red Bull RB18 all weekend on a single lap, saying he was "all over the place".
"I didn't really feel good in the whole weekend so far," Verstappen said straight after the qualifying session, which was red flagged for an incident between Lance Stroll and Nicholas Latifi and for a crash by Fernando Alonso.
"I think there's not been one lap where I actually felt confident, so a bit of a struggle. Of course, second is still a good result but just not feeling that great to go to the limit. We will try to analyse it."
"Probably in race pace everything stabilises a bit, but for me this weekend so far it has been all over the place.
"Of course, happy to be second, but I think also as a team we want more."
Leclerc said he was surprised by his qualifying pace as he felt Albert Park was a track he struggled with in the past and revealed he hadn't been able to put a great lap together until it mattered in Q3.
"It felt good, even more because it's a track where I've always struggled in the past as a driver," the 2022 championship leader said.
"This weekend, we really worked hard. It was a bit messy for the three free practices session for me. I managed to do some good laps, but not everything together.
"In Q3 I managed to put everything together, so it feels great and I'm very happy to be starting on pole tomorrow.
"The car is nice to drive but the Red Bulls were very quick in FP2 during the long fuel run.
"To be honest we were quite surprised by our pace in qualifying, so everything is possible tomorrow. We just need to do a good start and then hopefully we can keep that first position."
Verstappen's team-mate Sergio Perez qualified third just under a tenth behind the Dutchman, while Carlos Sainz Jr could only muster ninth in the second Ferrari after having to abort his first flyer due to an unfortunately timed red flag.
