A former Red Bull Formula 1 driver revealed the brutal way in which he was told that he would no longer be racing for the team.
Red Bull have never been afraid to pull the trigger when a driver is deemed to be underperforming. Nyck de Vries became the latest to find out the hard way, axed by AlphaTauri on Tuesday after failing to score a point in his 10 appearances for the team.
It comes four years after Pierre Gasly was demoted back down to the sister team after 13 races as he crumbled under the pressure of the top team. A few years before Daniil Kvyat was also moved down so that a certain Max Verstappen could drive for Red Bull Racing.
But the first man to go through the experience was Christian Klien. His motorsport career had been supported by Red Bull and so, when the company bought the Jaguar team and first entered the world championship in 2005, he shared a seat with Vitantonio Liuzzi before making it his own.
However, he later lost it when Mark Webber was signed for the 2007 season. Klien did not make it to the end of the previous campaign, either, as he was replaced for the final three races by Robert Doornbos.
"It was a very frustrating time, a very frustrating year as well, and it came to an end in Monza," explained the Austrian as he recalled that time. "Basically, Red Bull or Helmut Marko offered me a drive for 2007 in IndyCar and said, 'We don't extend your contract in Formula 1, but we'll offer you a drive in IndyCar'.
I said, 'No, I would like to stay in Formula 1. I feel like I have unfinished business here'. I said no to that offer and probably the mistake I did back then I did that publicly on Austrian television. I said no to that offer, and that didn't come down very well with Helmut."
Recalling that exchange he had with Marko, Klien revealed the blunt way in which his fellow Austrian made it clear that he would no longer be racing for Red Bull. He added: "After the race in Monza, he said, 'Okay, Christian, we finish it now!'
"There was so much going on behind [closed] doors that I was really, really frustrated with the situation and the way it [was] brought up to me, it wasn't very nice. So my reaction was probably wrong, but even the result, that reaction, I didn't want to go to IndyCar.
"And, anyway, I felt I had unfinished business in Formula 1, I definitely wanted to stay in F1. Even if that meant if I had to break up with Red Bull, who made everything possible for me to get into F1."
Klien spent the next few years as a test driver for Honda, BMW Sauber and then HRT – making a handful of appearances for the latter. These days, he still has Red Bull links through his role as an F1 pundit for Servus TV, the channel owned by the energy drinks giant, and explained why people tend to stick around after they join.
He said: "It's amazing and that's all down to [deceased founder] Dietrich Mateschitz and how he shaped his company. The people who work there, they're all very much the same that he liked them to be, or he was kind of the role model.
"You can travel around the world and talk to different people who work for Red Bull, they're more or less all the same. They all have the same mentality, and very, very loyal. That's amazing – I think, very rare nowadays in this world."
