Ever-improving GP3 Series competitor Thomas Hylkema delivered his best performance of the year during the championship finale at Monza in Italy over the weekend, 10th/11th September - the Dutch driver recording a superb 14th place finish, from 27th on the grid, in the first of the event's two races.Having arrived in the FIA Formula One World Championship support category in June, having missed the first couple of meetings, the 23-year-old's season has been building positively since that time. In Saturday's opening encounter, he underlined that with a tremendous drive.Lining up on the 14th row of the grid, Thomas had a lot of hard work ahead but made a good start and avoided some contact at the first corner to gradually work his way further up into the top 20 on his way to a well deserved 14th position.Gaining 13 places in total, the Dutchman enjoyed some great wheel-to-wheel battles, not least with Daniel Mancinelli and Mathias Laine. Despite losing a few positions when an attempted pass didn't pay off at the first chicane following a mid-race Safety Car period, Thomas fought back superbly and concluded a great outing by taking 14th from Mancinelli around the outside at Ascari on the final lap. In terms of his pace, the Delft-based driver posted a best lap of 1m47.081 seconds which was within just 1.1 seconds of that managed by race winner and new GP3 Champion Valtteri Bottas - proof of the growing speed and competitiveness displayed by Thomas in recent events."We had good pace all weekend, right from the first practice", he said, "Without the benefit of any slipstreams we still managed to be in the top 20 in session one although a good tow became more and more important. We knew we had good potential but in qualifying, on the second set of tyres, it became a big poker game as nobody wanted to give a slipstream so there was a lot of traffic."In the end I was quite happy with our pace compared to the others, just a shame we didn't have some more laps with a good slipstream. In race one I made a decent start, gained some places and then had a great fight with Mancinelli before the Safety Car came out."Thomas added: "Just before the Safety Car came in I was right behind Laine at the Parabolica but then a move on the outside at the chicane at the re-start didn't work out. So, I went wide and had to fight back again, passing Laine and Mancinelli on the last lap, which was a really good feeling."Set to begin Sunday morning's 16th and final round of the season from a season-best 14th on the grid, this became an improved 13th place when Richie Stanaway was handed a 10 position grid penalty after the opening encounter.Making a better start than he did during Saturday's race, Thomas unfortunately lost a few places at the first chicane but battled back well with some great moves - the highlight being a pass around the outside of Stanaway at the second part of Curve di Lesmo.Some very close racing followed but Thomas' involvement came to a highly frustrating conclusion at the end of lap one when contact to the left rear of his Tech 1 Racing car from Alexander Sims resulted in retirement. Although able to recover to the pits, the damage was too severe for Thomas to continue."It was very frustrating as we could have had a really good race again, that's how it looked as we were battling hard and racing very competitively", said the Dutchman reflecting on the contact, "In my eyes, what he (Sims) did was completely unnecessary and quite disappointing. Still, looking at the weekend as a whole, it's been very satisfying and we've shown some really good improvements."Now the 2011 GP3 Series has concluded, Thomas will turn his attention to preparing for next year's racing while also continuing to support his brother Bart's involvement in the final two events of the Cooper Tires British Formula 3 International Series.