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Christian Klien | Birthdate: | February 7th 1983 | | | | Country: | Austria  | | | | Gender: | M |
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| History: | | 2004 - | Formula 1: Jaguar Racing Ltd, 3 points |
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Cristian Klien: Once seen as a pay driver, now seen as a young gun capable of great things.
The reason for the former became obvious very early in 2004, when the Austrian was confirmed as Mark Webber's team-mate at Jaguar. Many thought that the team's reasoning was based solely on Cristian Klien's Red Bull sponsorship. Many were also surprised the team overlooked more established stars such as Alexander Wurz, who the team had tried to get in to replace Antonio Pizzonia the season before, and Pizzonia's eventual replacement Justin Wilson.
To be honest their was nothing in the first couple of races which showed the public any different. Klien wasn't dreadful, but he certainly didn't seem to deserve a place ahead of the more experienced stars. Australia and Malaysia came and went, but going into Bahrain Klien found himself on an even footing with Webber, and indeed everyone else, and knew it was time to perform at last.
Klien had an average, if unspectacular, qualifying. But then in the race he drove out of his skin in a great tussle with Kimi Raikkonen's McLaren, a tussle which only ended when the Finn's engine let go. It was the Austrian's most impressive race yet, and certainly reason to be confident.
However he never seemed to excel in the European races, and was outpaced consistantly by Mark Webber. But then Spa came, and everything changed.
In a bizarre race full of incident and drama, Klien took his underpowered Jaguar to sixth place, despite missing a wing mirror in the latter stages. Indeed, this caused David Coulthard in the McLaren to hit him from behind. Only nine drivers finished, but Klien was still happy with his first three championship points.
The season ended as uneventfully as it began, but by now F1 pundits were calling on Jaguar to give the youngster another chance. Klien duley got it, albeit with Jaguars successors, Red Bull Racing?.
Despite sharing the seat with Vitantonio Liuzzi, Klien was a revelation in 2005. He scored in Australia, Malaysia and Canada. Despite being beaten by experienced team-mate Coulthard, Klien has been happy with his performances, and only gave Liuzzi four shots at the race drive all season. By the end of the year Klien had fully justified his place on the grid. And with Red Bull purchasing the Minardi team, Klien is a guarantee to be in any one of the companies three available seats next year.
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Statistics
| Statistic | # | Percentage | First | Last | | Number of Grand Prix | 48 | 100% |  2004 |  2006 | | Number of starts | 48 | 100.00% | 2004 | 2006 | | Number of finishes | 33 | 68.75% | 2004 | 2006 | | Number of finishes in points | 8 | 16.67% |  2004 |  2006 | | Number of retirements | 15 | 31.25% |  2004 |  2006 |
Created by: system
last modification: Sunday 19 of March, 2006 [22:21:28 UTC] by admin
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