Drivers

Enrique Bernoldi

Bernoldi was another Brazilian from a comfortable background who was inspired by the exploits of Ayrton Senna. he started kart racing in 1987 at the age of nine and won a variety of regional and national kart titles before heading for Europe at the age of 17 to try his hand at car racing. He chose to enter Formula Alfa Boxer in Italy and finished fourth in the seriesat his first attempt. At the end of the year he tried Formula Renault and was immediately successful, winning the final round of the European series in an RC Motorsport Tatuus chassis.

The following year he won nine victories in European Formula Renault and took the title. This led to a deal to race in the British Formula 3 series with Serge Saulnier's Promatecme team alongside Nicolas Minassian. He won his first victory at Spa and finished fifth in the championship, staying on in 1998 to lead the Promatecme team. He won six victoires in the early part of the year but then faded and the title went in the end to rival Brazilian Mario Haberfeld.

In 1999 Bernoldi moved to Formula 3000 with the Red Bull Junior Team and began to do testing work for the Sauber team. But he failed to achieve much in 1999 and in 2000 and when Sauber signed up Kimi Raikkonen for the 2001 season his hopes of a Sauber drive were dashed. With backing from Red Bull he was able to buy a drive with Arrows in 2001 and did a respectable job, occasionally being able to match Jos Verstappen. His efforts against Heinz-Harald Frentzen in 2002 were less impressive and there was little demand for his services after Arrows closed its doors in 2002 and he ended up racing in the Nissan World Series. In the middle of 2004 he came back from this wilderness when he was named BAR test driver thanks to BAT's desire to have some Latin American involvement in the team.