Christian Klien
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| Missing image Christian_Klien_2.jpg Klien signing autographs at the 2005 United States Grand Prix |
Christian Klien (born February 7 1983) is an Austrian Formula One racing driver for the Red Bull Racing team.
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Early career
Born in Hohenems, in the Austrian Alps, Klien decided to start karting and decided to become a Formula One driver after meeting Brazilian F1 driver Ayrton Senna at a race. From 1996 to 1998, Klien won several kart races in both Switzerland and Austria, becoming the Suisse champion in his first year. In 1999, Klien moved to racing in the Formula BMW ADAC Junior Cup, winning four races and finishing fourth in the series. The following year, he moved into the main Formula BMW ADAC Championship with Team Rosberg, finishing the series ranked tenth overall and third in the rookie rankings. Continuing in the series in 2001, Klien managed to win five races, and ended up third in the series. Joining JD Motorsport for the Italian winter Formula Renault series, he won one event, leading to a drive for the team in German Formula Renault for 2002. Klien won four races, winning the German title, and finishing fifth in the European series. From there, Klien moved into the Formula 3 Euroseries, with Mucke Motorsport, winning four races and finishing runner-up in the title to 2004 Toyota F1 test driver Ryan Briscoe. Klien also won the 2003 Marlboro Masters event at Zandvoort.
Formula One career
Klien_(Red_Bull)_in_practice_at_USGP_2005.jpg
Thanks to financial support from Red Bull, Klien was signed as a race driver for the Jaguar Racing Formula One team in 2004. He had significant pressure on him as second driver to the highly-rated Mark Webber, but was the first driver to outqualify Webber in the same team, and showed impressive speed and ability. At the Belgian Grand Prix, Klien finished in sixth place, scoring three valuable championship points. He finished the season in 16th position.
During winter testing in 2005, Klien tested several times for Red Bull Racing alongside Vitantonio Liuzzi and David Coulthard. Klien secured the second race seat at Red Bull, alongside the veteran Coulthard. Klien started the year impressively, scoring points in the first two races before retiring early in the Bahrain Grand Prix. With both Klien and Liuzzi signed to race for the Red Bull team in 2005, Red Bull announced that Liuzzi would be racing in the San Marino, Spanish, Monaco and European Grands Prix in place of Klien. Klien will return to the race seat for the Canadian Grand Prix.
Red Bull have provision to run a third test driver on the Friday of race weekends; initially Klien was ineligible to do this during Liuzzi's time in the race seat, as he had competed in more than six Grands Prix in the previous two years. On April 14 2005, the FIA received unanimous support from all other teams to delete this rule, and so Klien will be able to function as test driver at the San Marino, Spain, Monaco and European Grand Prix. If this rule change had been rejected, Scott Speed or Neel Jani could have filled the role of third driver for these races.
Complete Formula One results
(Note: grands prix in bold denote points scoring races.)
| Yr | Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | Team |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Jaguar | AUS | MAL | BAH | SAN | SPA | MON | EUR | CAN | USA | FRA | GBR | DEU | HUN | BEL | ITA | CHN | JPN | BRA | Jaguar | |
| 2005 | Red Bull | AUS | MAL | BAH | SAN | SPA | MON | EUR | CAN | USA | FRA | GBR | DEU | HUN | TUR | ITA | BEL | BRA | JPN | CHN | Red Bull |
External link
Klien's official website (http://www.christian-klien.com/)
| Constructors and drivers competing in the 2005 Formula One championship: | |||||||||
| Ferrari | BAR | Renault | Williams | McLaren | Sauber | Red Bull | Toyota | Jordan | Minardi |
| 1 M Schumacher 2 Barrichello | 3 Button 4 Sato | 5 Alonso 6 Fisichella | 7 Webber 8 Heidfeld | 9 Räikkönen 10 Montoya | 11 Villeneuve 12 Massa | 14 Coulthard 15 Klien | 16 Trulli 17 R Schumacher | 18 Monteiro 19 Karthikeyan | 20 Friesacher 21 Albers |
de:Christian Klien et:Christian Klien it:Christian Klien ja:クリスチャン・クリエン sv:Christian Klien fr:Christian Klien