Cardoso showed early promise at a regional level, winning the 1990 Andalucian 125cc championship. He stepped up to the national championship the following year and in 1993 claimed the Spanish 125cc title while also winning the Andalucian 250cc series. That same year he made his 125cc World Championship debut at his home round in Spain. Over the next two seasons he combined world and domestic 250cc racing, finishing as runner-up in the Spanish series in 1995.
He focused on international racing for the first time in 1996 but was unable to improve on the 16th-place overall finish he had recorded in the world series in his debut foray. His domestic form remained strong, however, and in 1998 he achieved the double of winning the Spanish 250cc title while finishing 11th in the World Championship 250cc class.
His domestic and international performances earned Cardoso a 500cc World Championship seat with the TSR Honda team in 1999, where he finished 25th overall. In 2000 the team ran under Maxon Dee Cee Jeans sponsorship, and he improved to 18th in the standings. The 2001 season brought his most productive year to that point, riding for Luis D'Antin's team and accumulating 45 championship points — more than double his 2000 total — though this placed him only 16th overall in the classification.
When the championship converted to the four-stroke MotoGP format in 2002, Cardoso made only five race appearances with the D'Antin team and did not compete in the series at all in 2003.
After a year away from MotoGP, Cardoso shifted his attention to domestic competition and won the Spanish Formula Extreme title in 2004. In 2005 he moved to the Superbike World Championship, joining the DFXtreme Yamaha team. He showed competitive pace in testing but struggled for consistency in races, ultimately finishing 31st overall in the championship.
Cardoso returned to the MotoGP World Championship in 2006, again with the D'Antin outfit — now the Pramac d'Antin Ducati squad — riding a 2005-specification Ducati alongside German rider Alex Hofmann. With several privateer teams having departed the championship and factory equipment concentrated at the front, Cardoso and Hofmann typically competed at the lower end of the timing sheets alongside Tech 3 Yamaha's James Ellison. The 2006 season marked his second stint with D'Antin and his final appearance as a regular competitor at the top level of motorcycle Grand Prix racing.
Cardoso's career illustrated the path of a racer who found significant success at the national level in Spain before establishing himself as a consistent if not race-winning presence in the World Championship. His early 125cc and 250cc titles in the Spanish series provided the foundation for a decade of world-level competition, and his dual campaigns in both the Superbike World Championship and MotoGP across the mid-2000s demonstrated the breadth of his professional racing experience.