He cruised along at a pace of 62 or 63 seconds per lap, then roared home in 59.68.
Sneva began cutting away at his lead, by about a second per lap.
Brundle continued to charge, however, taking almost five seconds per lap off the Champion's lead.
Hamilton quickly began to pull away from the other cars, at the rate of about half a second per lap.
The course is mostly relatively flat with a tougher hill once per lap.
Some estimates suggested that this allowed teams to find upwards of one second per lap.
He started closing in, more than 1 second per lap.
Red Bull believed the changes cost them about half a second per lap.
He decided to back off and allow the brakes to cool, dropping three seconds per lap from his times.
The difference between the medium and the soft compounds was predicted around 0.8 seconds per lap.