THE CANADIAN PRESS
MONTREAL — A big cheer went up from the auditorium full of students at St-Henri high school when Gino Rosato took the stage.
Rosato is no big wheel in the glitzy world of Formula One racing, but the red Ferrari suit with a familiar black stallion logo he wore clearly marked the Laval, Que., native as a local success story.
The goateed, heavy-set Rosato is co-ordinator of sponsor services for Ferrari, but is better known as the bodyguard who shadowed star driver Michael Schumacher through consecutive world championships with Ferrari from 2000 to 2004.
“I was far from the best student, I even had to repeat a year (in Grade 4),” Rosato admitted to the students on Wednesday. “I gave my parents a lot of grief, but I realized a dream.”
That was to work for the team regarded as the cream of world motor racing, which he pulled off with a little self-sacrifice and a lot of persistence.
Rosato will be in the Ferrari garage this weekend when the Canadian Grand Prix marks its 30th year at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve.
“Anyone that’s part of Formula One dreams of working at Ferrari,” he said. “You fall in love with a Ferrari when you see one on the road.
“For us, it’s passion. Everyone wants to be part of this history.”
Rosato was taking part in a kind of F1 careers day forum organized by Bridgestone Tires along with former Toro Rossi driver and current Force India test driver Tonio Liuzzi, Honda Racing engineer Steve Clark, Williams press officer Silvia Hoffer Frangipane and Renault security manager Jean-Pierre Raymond.
Rosato does a little bit of everything at Ferrari, from helping out with security, looking after sponsors, making sure the right sponsor logos are in the right places and organizing visits to the team paddock from stars like Eric Clapton and the rock band Kiss.
His career path was unorthodox, but the message was about seizing opportunity when it presents itself.
In 1990, a 19-year-old Rosato was working as a busboy at a downtown hotel where many F1 personnel and media stay. He struck up a conversation with Ferrari mechanic Bruno Romani and through him, met other team personnel.
Soon, Ferrari was using Rosato as a guide to Montreal and an all-around gofer on their visits to the Canadian Grand Prix. His enthusiasm and ability to speak five languages — English, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese — helped a lot.
“I helped them get organized around the city, get food, furniture and things you might use around the racetrack,” he said. “Slowly, I was picked up to do more things.”
He gained the trust of team principal Jean Todt, who joined Ferrari in 1993 and began a complete overhaul of the big-budget team, which had quick but unreliable cars and had failed to win a drivers championship since Jody Scheckter’s title in 1979.
That’s when Rosato made a gamble.
Over the objections of his father, who had left Italy to escape poverty, Rosato cleaned out his bank account, moved to Maranello, Italy, where Ferrari is based and offered to work for free.
He spent two years sleeping on a co-workers’ sofa and working a race here and there until he was hired in 1996 and became a full-time member of the team’s travelling crew.
By then, Ferrari had signed Schumacher, the most gifted driver of his era, and was becoming a serious challenger to Williams and McLaren for F1 supremacy.
“Then we started winning world championships,” he said. “I was part of a team that rewrote history and I’m pretty proud to be part of that.
“I’m not one of the big personalities in F1, but I got into F1 and work with them. It seems impossible, but I had it in my heart and I worked hard.”
Rosato has now worked more than 200 races, watching Kimi Raikkonen take the team’s 15th drivers championship last year.
In the racing off-season, Rosato is a regular at Montreal Canadiens home games. He is a friend of Canadiens defenceman Patrice Brisebois, who will drive in one of the support races, the Ferrari Challenge, on Sunday morning.
Todt stepped down as CEO and team principal this year in favour of Stefano Domenicali, but Ferrari charges on with Raikkonen and Felipe Massa, each winning two of the six F1 races so far this season.
McLaren-Mercedes’s Lewis Hamilton, the winner two weeks ago in Monaco, leads the championship with 38 points, three more than Raikkonen and four ahead of Massa.
The first day of practice is on Friday, with qualifying on Saturday and the race on Sunday.