(born
February 7 1983 ) is an
Austrian Formula One racing driver for the
Red Bull Racing team.
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 .
]]
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 . He has since added two further 8th place finishes, a strong 5th in the season-closing
Chinese Grand Prix , also qualifying an excellent 6th for the
Brazilian 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 returned to the race seat for the
Canadian Grand Prix , expecting to have to hand it back to Liuzzi within a few races. Klien's has maintained the race seat since due to his strong perfomances and Red Bull's purchase of the
Minardi team giving them more race seats to share between their drivers for 2006.
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.
After a promising end of season performance in China, it was confirmed on December 16th that Klien would drive for the Redbull Racing outfit alongside
David Coulthard for the 2006 season.
Christian has started 2006 strongly, qualitying in the top 10 for the first 2 races of the season. In Bahrain he finished 8th to score a point, however in Malaysia he collided with
Kimi Raikkonen on the first lap and had to pit with suspension damage, before eventually dropping out with a hydraulic failure.
(Note: grands prix in denote '''points scoring''' races.)
