One of the most famous names in motor racing history will resound around Albert Park when Bruno Senna competes in the Dodo Formula 3 races at the 2006 Australian Grand Prix.

Bruno, 21, is the nephew of Brazil's brilliant three-time Formula One World Champion Ayrton Senna, who won 41 races in a Grand Prix career stretching from 1984 to 1994 before his death in a racing accident at the San Marino Grand Prix on May 1, 1994.

At the Australian Grand Prix Bruno Senna will compete in both the Dodo F3 races and the BMW M3 Track Attack. He is scheduled to arrive in Melbourne on the Thursday morning of race weekend, March 30, and go straight into the on-track action with the Adelaide-based Bronte Rundle Motorsport F3 team.

At the end of 1993, when Ayrton Senna left the McLaren team with whom he had won his three world titles to join Williams, he told his McLaren engineers: "If you think I'm good, wait till my nephew arrives!"

Bruno's arrival – in fact his entire racing career – was put on hold when his uncle lost his life in Italy. But at the end of 2004 Bruno followed in his famous uncle's footsteps by making his way to the UK to go testing and to make his debut in the Formula BMW series in that country.

He had earlier competed against his uncle in karts on the family farm in Brazil – a link to the Gawler Farm Machinery-sponsored Dallara F304 he will drive at Albert Park - but when Ayrton died Bruno was only 10 years old. It put paid to his own racing plans, but only temporarily. "They thought I had dropped it because I did not say anything," explained Bruno.

But with the help of Ayrton's former McLaren F1 team-mate and great friend Gerhard Berger, Bruno – by then in his late teens - had a test drive in a Formula Renault single-seater in Brazil, did well enough to persuade his family to back him and tested both a Formula Renault and a Formula BMW in the UK before making his race debut in the latter in the last few races of 2004.

While sixth place at Donington Park was his best result, two front-row starts were a sharp reminder that Bruno seemed to have inherited the one-lap speed for which his uncle was world-famous. Ayrton Senna still holds the F1 record of 65 pole positions, which Michael Schumacher may overtake this year.

For 2005 Bruno Senna planned to join Carlin Motorsport in the British F3 series – the category in which Ayrton Senna fought a brilliant campaign against Britain's Martin Brundle before taking the 1983 title. But that plan fell through when Trevor Carlin himself made the move into F1 with the new Midland team.

Senna has driven instead for the Double-R team in which current McLaren F1 star Kimi Raikkonen is one of the partners. Bruno's first race outing with the team was at Donington Park, the Midlands circuit where Ayrton Senna first tested a Grand Prix car back in 1983.

While Bruno has yet to win a race, he is decidedly quick in qualifying and keenly aware that he needs to hone his race craft.

"It is late," he says candidly. "I don't have any racing experience but maybe I have the speed to be there. Racing is only learning and every race that I do I learn a lot."

Hence the Australian trip, which began to take shape at last year's F3 meeting at the famous Macau street circuit. "Double-R approached me there and said they were keen to further Bruno's experience on street circuits," explained Bronte Rundle, himself a former stalwart of the Australian single-seater scene.

"I said I'd do it if they thought he had it in him," joked Rundle, who spent 30 years as a race driver and set up Team BRM in the late Nineties. The team has already provided Australian F3 champions in James Manderson (2002) and Karl Reindler (2004), while Barton Mawer was a race-winner in the F3 support races at Albert Park last year in a Team BRM-entered car.

In an unusual variation on the sports management theme, it is Bruno's sister Bianca who currently oversees his career progress and puts together the fledgling business deals on which he is hoping to build his own successful career. The pair moved together to London and now occupy a flat in the same inner-city precinct where F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has his offices.

"There are lots of people who want to help us," Bianca has said, "but people really have to care because of the Senna name."

The younger Senna is reputed to have paid US$80,000 for the UK test and Formula BMW races at the end of 2004, with the Senna family funding 90% of the estimated $750,000 2005 campaign, such is their belief in Bruno's ability. "I have the burning desire," Bruno adds. "You cannot imagine how much I push myself to do it."

Coincidentally, as Bruno prepares for his Australian debut, it was in Australia in November 1993 that Ayrton Senna, still driving for McLaren, claimed what would be the 41st and last Grand Prix win of his brilliant career.