Analysing Wrooom's exceptional growth

Variously perceived to be Ferrari's week-long ski camp at which team announcements are made, an official Formula 1 media gathering, or a combined Ferrari/Ducati 'jolly' function, the concept of the annual Wrooom festival began life almost 30 years ago as nothing other than a social ski bash casually organised by a couple of Italian journalists who wished to frolic in the white stuff with a few F1 drivers.

However, so exponential has been the event's growth that last year visuals from the Dolomites were seen by over 1 billion people in 186 countries - ranging from Afghanistan through Sudan to Zimbabwe.

But, back to the very beginning...

In 1982 the veteran award-winning photographer Ercole Colombo, to this day still extremely cosy with the team and contributor to scores of books on the Scuderia, and journalist Adriano Costa spent the off-season covering skiing championships, including the group of five G5 'grand-slam' masters events.

This led them to suggest a skiing bonanza with a few of the more approachable drivers, and thus the likes of Gilles Villeneuve, Didier Pironi, Patrick Tambay, Nelson Piquet (Snr), Ricardo Patrese, and later, Ayrton Senna, joined the intrepid pair in early January for a pre-season week of frolicking and fun.

They chose the Sestriere ski resort (near Turin) for the initial meet - although the plan was to rotate events at G venues - and local hoteliers were quick to grasp the advantages of having a dozen or so of the world's fastest sportsmen grouped together under their roofs for a week or so.

No surprise, then, that they enterprisingly offered the use of their establishments and ski lifts free of charge. The next step was for the hosting communities to sponsor the by-now annual meetings of an expanding group of Italian journalists and F1 stars.

A fully sponsored event was just a step away, but this strategy brought problems: when, for example, the Industrial Vehicle Corporation (Iveco) agreed to sponsor an event, Renault's drivers were forbidden from participating due to commercial conflicts. The FIAT Group, at that stage revamping its Sestriere resort, offered its facilities without restrictions or commercial impositions.

In parallel, a young Italian had been carving a name for himself in the Italian tobacco market. Having held responsibility for promoting Madonna di Campiglio - which had but one major annual event, namely the one-day '3 Tre' world championship slalom shoot-out (named after 3 races in Trentino, the region within which Madonna finds itself, and pronounced 'tray-tray') - Maurizio Arrivabene joined Philip Morris in a (junior) Marlboro sales capacity.

So successful were his efforts that, while Philip Morris International principally sponsored McLaren, plus Ferrari's drivers - whereby Philip Morris paid the Scuderia's drivers in return for Marlboro branding initially on the overalls, and later on the cars, albeit in low-key fashion - Arrivabene's budgets were sufficiently large to enable his department to separately fund the new BMS Scuderia Italia outfit. His F1 links did not end there, either: He is today Philip Morris International Vice-President with responsibility for Marlboro global communications and promotion, by virtue of which he sits on the F1 Commission as sponsor representative.

Drawing on his earlier duties in Madonna, Arrivabene was quick to grasp the potential of formalising the ski week, and in 1991 he offered Marlboro Italy sponsorship for a (refreshingly open) media/(exceedingly fine, and mostly in that order) wining and dining/(arduous, day and night) skiing event for the Italian media in the enchanting resort. A name was sought, and in those early days the week-long fest was christened Wroom 'si gira' (after the sound of a revving engine and the Italian term for 'action').

Jean Alesi and Alain Prost at the 1991 Canadian Grand Prix © LAT

Alain Prost and Jean Alesi were the Scuderia's drivers that year - coincidentally amongst the most disappointing seasons in Ferrari history - and, whilst not Italian, certainly knew how to strap on skis. Yet they were strangely absent from that inaugural event, which played host to a handful of (Italian) journalists and a tiny group of Ferrari personnel, mainly technical.

Still, it set the scene for the future, and, like Topsy, the event grew in numbers and stature despite being (mainly) confined to Ferrari's drivers, sponsor and team representatives, and 'A' list Italian media folk. With McLaren then being Marlboro's primary commercial focus, the Woking team was invited, and both David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen, plus Ron and Lisa Dennis, became regular visitors to the Dolomites.

Gradually, 'foreign' media members were invited, but, according to F1 stalwart Nigel Wolheim, who has attended virtually every edition since Colombo first dreamed up the concept, Wroom was at that stage largely Italo-centric.

That, though, changed with the signings of Michael Schumacher and Eddie Irvine by Ferrari. The former was (and remains) a motorsport paparazzi's dream target, and Philip Morris rapidly realised it was better to have the international media inside the tent peering out than the opposite. At the same time Marlboro and McLaren parted ways, enabling Wroom to concentrate solely upon Ferrari and its drivers.

Thus the event went fully international, with Madonna di Campiglio gaining massive worldwide exposure in the process, so much so that the name of the hamlet in arguably the most picturesque region within the Trentino Dolomites was exposed first to millions, then to tens and hundreds of millions of people, until last year the number of people who saw at least a single news snippet or visual generated by Wroom exceeded a billion people. (The 'si gira' suffix had since been dropped for simplicity's sake).

In fact, so did Wroom overshadow Madonna's annual 3 Tre event, which had by then lost world title status (due to be restored in 2012), that the village and region came in as partners to Philip Morris, and Wroom is today (by an enormous margin) the region's largest annual festival, with thousands of holidaymakers planning their vacations around Wroom Week simply to get a glance of their motorsporting heroes on the slopes. Since then Shell, Puma, FIAT, and Alfa Romeo have lent support, with the latter two providing courtesy cars.

Marlboro took title sponsorship of the Ducati MotoGP team in 2003, and hosted stand-alone media sessions in the Dolomites in, respectively, 2004/5, but in 2007 that event was absorbed into Wroom, giving the week additional status immediately after Michael Schumacher retired from active competition. That said, with his recently announced comeback - and latest antics in a GP2 car - the German legend was a much discussed subject during this year's celebratory, 20th anniversary edition of Wrooom...

Luca di Montezemolo, Tamara and Bernie Ecclestone at Wroom 2009

Last year, at the height of F1's various political wrangles, Bernie Ecclestone graced Wrooom with his presence. In typical BCE style he brushed off suggestions of milking the event for own purposes, stating he had been in the area on winter vacation and simply popped in to wish daughter Tamara, present for Sky TV Italia, Happy 2009, and if journalists wished to question him, replies were only courteous...

Of course, the thorny subjects of team revenues and other Ferrari/FOTA issues (Ferrari president Luca Montezemolo was then FOTA chairman) were commented upon by Ecclestone, causing the suave Italian to unexpectedly find himself in the vicinity and thus able to hotfoot it up the mountains at short notice to dispute some of Ecclestone's statements - resulting in massive worldwide coverage for an event which had in the meantime grown to become F1's pre-eminent pre-season event.

This year Bernie returned - despite Ms T Ecclestone not being present - and, although he was far from political during interviews, bets are on that Montezemolo will put in an appearance at some stage before Wroom ends Saturday.

An idea of Wrooom's growth over the years is best illustrated by a look at the numbers: In 1991 a team of five organised the entire event, which hosted, according to Wolheim, just 30 Italian journalists stationed in a single hotel; today over 120 staff tend to around 150 media members representing outlets (TV, radio, print, internet and photographers) in 60-odd countries, with whole hotels throughout the town taken over by Wrooom to accommodate the full contingent which numbers 400 with all support functions, proving that oil and (frozen) water do mix superbly.