They come, they go; the best drivers in the world, moving between teams like the world’s best professional footballers. At Ferrari, the pre-season introduction of a new star performer in this elegant ski resort in the Dolomites has become a familiar rite of passage. It is the Scuderia’s equivalent of presenting a new striker, complete with his new team shirt.

The big signing this time is Fernando Alonso, who will be earning, at conservative estimates, about £15 million a year over the next three seasons in the red-and-white colours of Maranello. And there is no doubt that the proud Italian team are hoping that the 28-year-old Asturian will be the driver to take them on to further glories, much in the way that a certain Michael Schumacher led the oldest team in Formula One history through their most successful era.

Felipe Massa, returned from injury and raring to go, is still a big presence in the team, but the Brazilian is going to have an uphill fight this year to oppose the onslaught from the Spanish side of the garage.  Alonso has come to Ferrari saying all the right things and the contrast with Kimi Raikkonen, his taciturn and ill-educated predecessor, could hardly be more stark. With a ready smile and an easy charm — as well as a willingness to ski in the day and be part of the traditional torchlight procession down the mountain at night — Alonso is pressing the right buttons.

At his formal introductory press conference yesterday, when drivers and hacks suspend activity on the slopes for a little light work, Alonso delighted the mass ranks of the Italian press corps by saying that he has no plans to drive for any other team. This is it for him. Ferrari is the peak, he said.

“All of you have dreamed of driving Ferrari street cars, I’m the same,” he said. “This will 100 per cent be my last team. I want to finish my career with a good taste in the mouth.”

Raikkonen said three words in Italian when he arrived at Madonna in January 2007 — “Buon giorno tutti.”

Alonso started with the same phrase but continued in fluent Italian, much to the delight of his audience. He showed that he knows the history of the team. He described the thrill of visiting the Ferrari factory, of chatting to all the engineers on the road-car production lines and realising, as he put it, that they are all race fans. “I’ve felt comfortable from my first day,” he said. “The team has welcomed me like a family.”

As for the hopeful prediction delivered on Wednesday by Stefano Domenicali, the team principal, that Alonso can kick-start a new era of success at Ferrari, Alonso joked that he was in no position, as the new boy, to disagree with his new superior.

The Spaniard makes for a fascinating prospect in the red garage. Schumacher apart, there is no driver in Formula One at present whose career has swung from moments of sublime glory, in the form of two World Championships with Renault and some spectacular race performances, to dark days when his moral and sporting credentials have been exposed as seriously wanting.

During his traumatic year with McLaren in 2007 when he believed that they were favouring Lewis Hamilton, who was at the time a Formula One rookie, Alonso resorted to trying to force the team to slow down the Englishman. He also threatened to expose the secret links that he and others at McLaren had with counterparts at Ferrari, and he escaped censure for his role in what became known as “Spygate” only because he told the FIA everything he knew. By the end of the season, he had had enough and his three-year contract was torn up as he returned with his tail between his legs to Renault.

Then, in 2008, he inherited victory in the now-infamous Singapore Grand Prix when Nelson Piquet Jr, his new team-mate, crashed his car intentionally to help Alonso to win. Alonso has always maintained that he knew nothing of the plan.

The pre-season, and especially that at Ferrari, has been dominated by talk of Schumacher’s comeback with Mercedes GP — the prospect is causing a lot of misery with people in this part of northern Italy — but in many ways this is also the beginning of Alonso’s renaissance.

He has been in the Formula One wilderness since his abortive move to McLaren, scrapping around at the back of the field in uncompetitive Renault machinery. For two years he has been waiting for his chance to match his undoubted talents as a driver and a developer of a racing car with a team of similar stature and now he has got it. He has told us that he will never drive for anyone else in Formula One, so it is all or nothing for Alonso as his Ferrari career begins.

Will he cope with Massa, trying to prove that he can lead the team to his first title? How will he fare against Schumacher, his former rival, and Hamilton, his more recent and bitter opponent? And how will Ferrari cope with Alonso?

Domenicali claims that outsiders are attacking the team, by underlining Alonso’s need to be the focus of attention, at the expense of his team-mate. He says the Scuderia are approaching the management of Alonso “calmly and rationally”. Easy to say in a ski resort in the Dolomites. Not quite so easy to stick to in the heat of battle in Melbourne, Monza or Interlagos.

The best press trip of them all

• Some say it is the best “freebie” in journalism. Certainly this correspondent has struggled to find a more enjoyable work trip than Ferrari’s annual shindig in Madonna di Campiglio, which they call “Wrooom”.

• Now in its twentieth year and paid for to the tune of an estimated £1 million by Ferrari’s main sponsor, Philip Morris, the tobacco company, with contributions from Shell, Fiat, Puma and the Trentino region, the idea is to present the team’s drivers for the season in a setting far removed from the paddock.

• This year about 150 journalists have been invited. In between a couple of press conferences, most of us get the chance to get on the piste — gear, passes and guides complimentary — with the likes of Fernando Alonso or Felipe Massa. Then each evening a dinner is laid on and the week ends with a send-off in a nightclub.

• It is possible that this sort of event could affect one’s independence of view when it comes to reporting on Ferrari. They pride themselves on their family atmosphere and they are a team whom all of us who are lucky enough to attend Wrooom feel we know from the inside out.