In his second season in Formula One, Brazilian Enrique Bernoldi is still trying to make people forget he is paying for his Arrows drive. Only at last year's Monaco Grand Prix, Bernoldi was able to make the headlines when fighting with David Coulthard for half the race. Graham Holliday reviews the young Brazilian's fortunes in Formula One

With odds of 350 to 1 you'd have been hard pressed to find anybody apart from his mum banging a drum for Enrique Bernoldi around the million dollar Monaco bends last week. At the same time anybody betting on seeing an overtaking manoeuvre down the main straight up to Saint Devote would quite rightly have been laughed out of the principality. You'd have found better odds pre-Monaco on the chances of seeing Elvis Presley serving Margaritas in the Rascasse restaurant than you would have done on seeing Enrique Bernoldi do what he did into Saint Devote.

That's right, it wasn't Michael Schumacher rattling the Royal jewellery as he went side by side past the royal box into Saint Devote, it was 350 to 1 man, Enrique Bernoldi. The same man who only a year ago was allegedly told by McLaren Mercedes' Ron Dennis and Norbert Haug that if he "continued to drive again in that sort of way (he is) not going to be in Formula One very long." Well, he's lasted one more year so far and if it wasn't for compatriot Felipe Massa in the Sauber shunting him off the circuit after that brilliant overtaking move, the 22-year old would be basking in the adoration normally associated with every other Formula One rookie bar himself and Minardi's Alex Yoong.

In 2001 the pundits salivated over new drivers with their, 'Kimi this' and their 'Juan Pablo that'. For the most part, Bernoldi's rookie year in the Arrows was spent driving in the blind spot until he faultlessly held off Coulthard at Monaco for the best part of half the race as they battled it out for 15th place.

He was publicly and quite wrongly lambasted by Dennis and Haug at the time (which is a bit rich considering how Coulthard arguably did exactly the same thing at Monaco this season all be it for first place). It took Arrows boss Tom Walkinshaw to come out and defend the boy, "I think from two people with the stature they have in Formula One, particularly with Ron being an owner of a multi-World Championship-winning team, to go and threaten a kid in his first season of Formula One when he has done nothing else other than race and keep it off the barriers, is wholly inappropriate."

Walkinshaw may have stood up for him, but his 2001 teammate, Dutchman Jos Verstappen wasn't having any of it later on in the season, "I don't get on with him very well. We talk to each other very little and for me, I must say, he is the worst teammate I have had in Formula One." And if that wasn't enough, 2002 Formula One rookie Allan McNish said, "I had a problem with Bernoldi at the start. He seems to think that he is driving a dodgem car and at 200 mph that isn't clever."

Enrique Bernoldi's entry into Formula One has been anything but smooth. He may have got the last laugh with Verstappen when Arrows unceremoniously dumped the Flying Dutchman out of their squad just four weeks prior to the 2002 season opener in Melbourne in favour of German driver Heinz-Harald Frentzen. But the fact is that in the eyes of most onlookers the man from Curitiba is a pay driver in the mould of Alex Yoong, Pedro Diniz before him, and assorted Japanese drivers before the lot of them. Bernoldi may well have stalled at the door of Formula One had he not brought a suitcase full of Red Bull dollars to the party, but should that continue to stain his record on the track considering his move at Monaco?

Bernoldi is finding it hard to locate the on-off switch that regulates that much sought after limelight in Formula One and it's getting somewhat tiresome as he said before the race at Monaco, "What annoys me is that some people seem to forget… like in Imola, where I overtook Salo, Fisichella, both Jaguars. There was very little other overtaking and nobody noticed. But Felipe overtook Trulli, who had a car problem, and everybody made a big thing out of it. Sometimes it's a little bit annoying." For a driver who is perceived as a pay driver, the automatic rule is that he must prove himself twofold on the track to even be considered as a serious threat.

However, an improving Arrows car is helping matters as they continue to redden the faces of their engine suppliers in the Jaguar garage. Frentzen topped the timesheets in Sunday's warm-up at Monaco raising a few eyebrows in the pitlane. The Arrows race pace didn't let the team down either resulting in a points finish for Frentzen while Bernoldi clocked the fastest time through sector two and outpaced the eventual winner Coulthard in all but the final sector. As Frentzen said after the race, "Like I said in Spain, scoring one point puts pressure on us to score more, but it is the right kind of pressure. This point will keep the momentum going."

Arrows can do with all the momentum they can get as the Leafield-based team are one of several teams gasping for air in the rarefied atmosphere at the lower end of the Formula One grid. Arrows, along with Minardi and Jordan are all potential fallers in the race to survive the current cash drought. If communications giant Orange's Monaco yacht party is anything to go by, they look happy with their investment for the time being. But with no financial upturn in sight for the world economy, reliable and generous sponsors are at a premium making Formula One a very tenuous business to be in. The Austrian cash from Red Bull might see Bernoldi through in the short term, but nothing is certain even for so-called pay drivers.

All any driver can do is drive as quickly as possible every other Sunday. A reliable engine and arguably one of the best chassis on the grid could help Arrows in Canada where reliability is a precious commodity in a race often marked by high attrition. As Bernoldi said earlier in the season, "The new engine and car will give us a realistic chance of scoring points. The goal is to be really competitive." Monaco proved that qualifying in Austria wasn't a fluke where Frentzen pipped Bernoldi by less than one tenth of a second for the Arrows pair to line up in 11th and 12th spots respectively. That there is more to come with Cosworth power sitting under the bonnet is undisputed. However, it will be no easy task for the boys in Orange to continue their good run through to Montreal.

For the moment, the Brazilian drums reverberate to the sound of Rubens Barrichello and Felipe Massa. If Enrique Bernoldi is to join them in making a noise back home he will need to pull out of the blind spot permanently to make sure that it's not just Mum whose banging a drum for him as the Formula One circus reaches Canada this weekend.