- published: 07 Feb 2016
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Álvaro Parente (born 4 October 1984 in Porto) is a Portuguese racecar driver. Parente's father was also a race driver.
After winning the Karting European Junior Championship in 1998, Parente made his debut in auto racing in 2001 at the age of 16, driving in the Spanish F3 Championship. In the following year, he was integrated into the Team Portugal project and scored a win on his way to 4th place in the series.
Parente than began a more international career in 2003, moving to the F3 Euroseries with Team Ghinzani, but the Mugen-Honda engine proved to be inferior to the Mercedes and he scored a single point. He did better with one-off entries in Italian Formula 3 and at Spa in a round of the British Formula 3 Championship, his first association with Carlin Motorsport, which was repeated that year in the Macau Grand Prix.
This brief contact paved the way for a contract with Carlin for the 2004 season, where he took part in the British series, scoring another win and finishing 7th in the championship standings. He also took part in the Marlboro Masters and at Macau, but in the former the Mugen-Honda could not take the fight to the Mercedes drivers and in the latter he was taken out in the first lap.