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Christian KlienChristian Klien (born February 7 1983) is an Austrian Formula One racing driver for the Red Bull Racing team. 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 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 and Monaco Grands Prix in place of Klien. The team will then evaluate which driver will secure the race seat for the remainder of the season. Although Red Bull have provision to run a third test driver on the Friday of race weekends, Klien is ineligible to do so during Liuzzi's time in the race seat, as Klien has competed in more than the allowable number of races in recent years. Complete Formula One results (Note: grands prix in bold denote points scoring races.) External link Klien's official website Klien, Christian Klien, Christian
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