Dutch racing driver Thomas Hylkema recorded his best finish of the season so far during a rain-hit ninth round of the GP3 Series at Germany's Nurburgring over the weekend, 23rd/24th July - the category rookie scything his way through from the back of the grid to claim a deserved top 18 result.In only his third event in the FIA Formula One World Championship support series, the Tech 1 Racing driver continued to show strong improvements and battled back strongly from an engine problem during qualifying to gain 12 positions in the first of the weekend's two races.During the second encounter, round 10, the 22-year-old battled on the fringe of the top 20 but a heavy excursion on the final lap led to an unfortunate non-finish. Even so, Thomas departs Germany in a very positive frame of mind ahead of next weekend's action in Hungary.He said: "It was an eventful weekend but I was a lot closer to where I need to be, especially in race one. We had decent pace in the dry and when the rain came it was really exciting, especially the last lap - it was really difficult to keep the car on the track on slick tyres. We made good progress and to finish in 18th place was very satisfying after starting right at the back following the engine problem."In practice on Friday, 22nd July, Thomas made excellent progress between the two sessions to slice well over a second off his lap times. In qualifying on Saturday, 23rd July, though, a small mistake on his first set of tyres was punished very hard when he was unable to post a lap on his second set due to the emergence of the aforementioned engine problem.Much like the first of the races at Silverstone during the previous GP3 event, round nine became a lottery with rainfall on two separate occasions shaking up the mix. Light precipitation as the drivers made their way to the grid ahead of the formation lap resulted in a few runners choosing to change to wet tyres while the rest - Thomas included - stayed on slicks hoping the shower would pass.Early on that was indeed the case, the rain ceasing and meaning dry-weather rubber was the only option with nowhere near enough rain to make treaded tyres effective. Climbing up the order very well in indeed, Thomas' pace was good and by lap six he had risen from 30th position into 22nd place.Into the final third of the race the clouds overhead got ever darker and rain started to fall again, much heavier this time, so the gamble was whether to remain on track and cope with slicks or pit for wets. Thomas wisely chose to remain on slicks and handled the increasingly tough conditions superbly to climb into 18th place before the chequered flag on lap 15.Round 10 on Sunday, 24th July, was wet from the outset following early morning rain and all drivers ran on treaded rubber. Ending lap one in 24th position, Thomas managed to claw back a couple of places over the course of the 15-lapper but on the last lap a major excursion resulted in a heavy impact with the barriers. Thankfully, he emerged unscathed and just disappointed not to have finished.There is less than a week to wait for the next two rounds of GP3 Series action with the Hungaroring near Budapest hosting the FIA Formula One World Championship's Hungarian Grand Prix next weekend, 30th/31st July.Looking ahead, Thomas added: "I learned a lot again this weekend so I can't wait to be back in the car so quickly in Hungary a few days from now. Hopefully we'll have more consistent weather but if it's wet again I won't be that disappointed as we did a good job in those conditions at Nurburgring. We need to improve the qualifying, that's the aim for sure at the next event."