Nyck de Vries drove a 12th time in qualifying on Saturday and he crossed the finish line in that position a day later. The Dutchman has not finished this high before this season. While the AlphaTauri driver himself was not entirely happy about his performance, Helmut Marko is a lot more satisfied.

The same Marko is rumoured to have made it clear to De Vries a few weeks ago that he must perform better if he wants to keep his spot with the Faenza-based team. Red Bull Racing's 80-year-old advisor acknowledges that he had a conversation with the Dutchman, but stresses again that there is no question of a rock-hard deadline.

De Vries twelfth in Monaco

De Vries' performance in Monaco was reasonably pleasing to Marko. As he told Motorsport.com. "This was by far Nyck's best weekend so far at AlphaTauri. This is also what I want to see from him. We just got someone with experience to be able to put the fire to Yuki." The still pointless finished ahead of his teammate on Sunday after the latter spun and lost a number of positions.

Next weekend will be a very important one for De Vries. The 28-year-old driver is very familiar with the Barcelona circuit, so it will be an important gauge of where exactly he stands in relation to Yuki Tsunoda. If the Japanese is half a second faster than De Vries in both qualifying and the race, that would be extremely embarrassing.