Enrique Bernoldi grew up watching the performances of Brazilian World Champions, Ayrton Senna and Nelson Piquet and was bitten by the racing bug at an early age. His own racing career began when he was nine in a local karting championship in Brazil.

After moving to Sao Paulo and defeating the likes of current CART front-runners, Helio Castro-Neves and Tony Kanaan the Brazilian decided he was ready for European racing.

In 1997 he signed to race for the Promatecme team in the British Formula 3 Championship - the proving ground of many a champion including Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna and Mika Hakkinen. However, in January he was involved in a road accident, when another car jumped a red light, and had to spend some time in hospital. He impressed everyone with his quick recovery and was ready to race when the season began in March that year.

This was followed by two years in Formula 3000 with the Red Bull Junior team, and a testing role at Sauber. He impressed Sauber team boss, Pete Sauber, enough to be considered for a race seat in 2001. However, this went to Kimi Raikkonen and after a test in January he joins the Arrows team instead.