With the most keenly-anticipated British double act since Graham Hill and Jim Clark teamed up for Lotus more than 40 years ago only three days short of their first race, Jenson Button has underlined the need for him and Lewis Hamilton to work together if one of them is to claim a second world title.

The fallout from Ayrton Senna's tragic death forced his nephew to put his F1 career on hold but now he is ready to make his own mark in the sport he loves

Bruno Senna may wonder at the wisdom of beginning his grand prix career this weekend and with a team who are struggling to start, never mind finish, a race, but the Brazilian should take heart from the Formula One debut made by his uncle in 1984.

Ayrton Senna's first of 161 races, many of which would contribute to three World Championships, was made with Toleman in the Brazilian grand prix at Rio de Janeiro rather than the top-line teams that were already interested in his potential. Toleman were hardly state of the art. The car was never likely to win an award for elegance but Senna used it to gain experience away from the limelight and move centre stage when atrocious conditions at Monaco allowed him to finish a remarkable second.

The next year he drove for Lotus followed, in 1988, by McLaren. The rest is history. His clutch of world titles would have doubled had arguably one of the sport's greatest drivers"“ certainly, the most charismatic "“ not been killed during the San Marino grand prix on 1 May, 1994.

Bruno Senna will be lucky if hefinishes in the top 10 and scores a Championship point in any of this year's 19 races. Hispania Racing F1's line-up was finalised last week. The rescue package for the former Campos Meta 1 team had kept his hopes alive even though the learning curve for driver and team will be vertical from the moment practice starts tomorrow and they have a first chance to work together. It is like trying to qualify for the Olympic 100m final having trained on a ploughed field in ill-fitting shoes.

All Senna can hope to do is keep out of everyone's way and grab opportunities, such as his uncle's at Monaco 1984, when a wet track switches the balance heavily in favour of a driver's skill rather than the capabilities of his car. Certainly, it will remove Senna from the expectation. "I hope, in a short time, that everybody remembers me for being Bruno, myself, and not for my uncle's surname," says Senna. "I've learned to live with it and although it helped me at the beginning to find sponsors and find contacts, to be a driver you need to have a natural talent."

Senna, runner-up in the 2008 GP2 Championship, came close to racing in F1 with Brawn in 2009, but the British team retained Rubens Barrichello. Senna spent the year racing in the Le Mans Series for sports cars before an endless wait while the Campos team morphed into HRT F1.

Senna will be 27 in October, this comparatively senior age for a debutant being accounted for by the backlash from the death of his uncle. Bruno was 10 when the family was devastated by the news from Italy in 1994. Senna had spoken with genuine enthusiasm about his nephew's latent talent after they had regularly raced karts together on the family's private track near São Paulo. But Bruno knew he could no longer mention entering a sport capable of producing such distress. There was no option but to concentrate on his studies and turn his back on karting, an area where he should have been cutting his teeth.

"There was never a point, after the accident, when I didn't want to go racing," says Senna. "But, obviously, my family were not happy with it so I didn't race out of respect for them. For the first two years I was OK and didn't have much trouble coping with not racing because I just put it to the back of my mind. I had plenty of life ahead of me and I thought that I could find other things, other sports that I enjoyed.

"But when I became 15 or 16, I began to think about what I wanted to do with my life. I had tried a few things but realised that nothing touched me like motor racing. Then it really started to bother me. I saw some of my friends and my opponents from when I was 10 years old and they were doing well. I couldn't help but think that I used to beat those guys and I thought I could be there, doing well. It was beginning to hurt."

Diplomacy was required when approaching his mother. Viviane Senna da Silva had not only been extremely close to Ayrton but she had devoted herself to the Ayrton Senna Foundation, the charity started without fanfare by her brother and which has raised US$100m (£67m) for projects aiding underprivileged children. It was during a private moment at home that the subject of racing was raised.

"When I was 18 I was working with my grandfather in one of our car dealerships," Senna says . "My mum realised that I wasn't very happy. I didn't want to go out, I didn't want to do much.[She] came to me and said, 'You are getting a bit older now. What do you want to do with your life?' And I was, like, 'Y'know mum, I would actually like to go back to racing'. She wasn't angry or anything but she was surprised because, for eight years, I hadn't spoken about it. After a while she realised that I was serious. Then she started to give me a lot of support.

"We realised from the very beginning thatthere was no point using another name to avoid attention," he adds. "As soon as the first person discovered who I was, they'd be asking, 'Why are you not using your name? Are you afraid about it?' So I thought it was best to just go for it and take the pressure head on."

That pressure is about to increase hugely from the moment a new phase in Senna's life begins in Bahrain this weekend.