Christian Klien

Formula One career

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.

Related Topics:
Red Bull - Jaguar Racing - 2004 - Mark Webber - Belgian Grand Prix

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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. 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.

Related Topics:
2005 - Red Bull Racing - Vitantonio Liuzzi - David Coulthard - Bahrain Grand Prix - San Marino - Spanish - Monaco - European - Canadian Grand Prix - Minardi

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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.

Related Topics:
April 14 - San Marino - Spain - Monaco - European - Scott Speed - Neel Jani

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Complete Formula One results

(Note: grands prix in bold denote points scoring races.)

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