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Running in qualifying trim is perfectly legitimate and useful in its own right. They need to know lots more about the car in low fuel conditions than can be known from just taking the gas out of a standard car - it might be that the optimum set-up has some features of a pure qualifying one (such as stiffer suspension).
Added to which the record that he broke would also have been set in similar spec, I'd have thought, since all the teams will run on low fuel once in a while for the same reason. There is of course a very important distinction between this proceedure and the dubious practice of literally running light (minus some ballast and under the limit) in order to grab headlines, which could yet turn out to be what they are doing - although i doubt it.
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