Tech 1 Racing's Thomas Hylkema enjoyed his most competitive outing yet in the GP3 Series at Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit on Sunday, 10th July - the Dutch racer delivering his best performance by far during the second of the weekend's two races. Steadily improving his pace throughout the event, the 22-year-old from Delft in The Netherlands made huge strides in round eight and despite an unfortunate stall at the start of the race he climbed back up the order well to finish just 0.3 seconds shy of the top 20. Almost matching the pace of more experienced team-mate Tama's P'al Kiss in terms of outright lap time, Thomas was easily the quicker of the two during the closing stages of the 14-lap encounter and placed the Hungarian under huge pressure over the course of the final couple of laps. Challenging hard over the last 5.8 kilometres, Thomas upped the ante and almost attached himself to the rear wing of his team-mate's car into Copse Corner and through the incredibly fast sequence of turns at Maggotts, Becketts and Chapel onto the Hangar Straight. With no way past through Stowe, Thomas seized his chance into the penultimate corner, Vale, and attempted to go around the outside of P'al Kiss. Any room soon vanished though so the Dutch driver sensibly opted to back out of the move and he crossed the line just 0.3 seconds adrift. "I'm really very happy with the pace we showed in race two", said Thomas, "Unfortunately the start wasn't so great but my pace was good, I caught the cars ahead quite well and I was quite a bit quicker than a lot of guys in front. Mid-race I was able to run some good lap times and then I caught Tama's quite easily towards the end which is great for my confidence." Qualifying on Saturday, 9th July, started off in damp conditions but the track progressively dried and Thomas ended up with a best lap of 1m54.018 seconds (186.002 km/h), placing him at the head of row 14 for round seven. He had to start the encounter from the back of the 30-car grid though due to a 10 place penalty incurred at the previous event in Valencia, Spain. As everyone set off on the green flag formation lap prior to the first race of the weekend, rain started to fall fairly heavily so around two-thirds of the drivers chose to pit for wet-weather tyres rather than lining up on the grid. Making for an unusual start to say the least, with less than a dozen cars actually on the track, Thomas had a frustrating wait in the pitlane at the back of a lengthy queue of cars all waiting for tyre changes. By the time he was able to join in the action, the Dutchman had lost a significant amount of time so he focused for the 14 laps on learning as much as he could en-route to a solid 20th place. "We had a sensor failure in the first practice and the second practice was wet so it was tough to get a good feeling for things before qualifying", added Thomas, "Then I was too cautious in that session so I didn't reach my full potential. Unfortunately we lost a lot of time in the pits at the start of the first race so all I could realistically do was concentrate on learning more and improving my lap times. "It's good to have two full race distances under my belt now, we maximised the track time this weekend and I learnt a lot - especially about the Pirelli tyres and where the performance drops off in the races. That will all be a big help for me ahead of the next round which I'm really looking forward to as this weekend has been very encouraging for us." Next on the agenda for Thomas will be the ninth and 10th rounds of the GP3 Series, his third event in the FIA Formula One World Championship support category, at the Nurburgring in Germany over the weekend 23rd/24th July.