Being an Italian driver in a Ferrari on Italian soil - it's the opportunity pretty much every young Italian currently racing a kart is dreaming of, but also a source of massive, potentially crushing, pressure.
And it's the situation awaiting Giancarlo Fisichella this weekend, as he takes his first laps as a Ferrari Formula 1 driver in front of the Monza Tifosi, motorsport's most fervent fan group.
With a Ferrari reserve role already in the bag for when Felipe Massa reclaims his car, these five races in a Ferrari also mark Fisichella's F1 swansong, and it's a fitting way for him to bow out.
Rewind 14 years, and the then 22-year-old Fisichella was one of a group of Italians invited to test for Ferrari as it hunted for someone qualified and willing to be the soon to arrive Michael Schumacher's number two.
The evaluation was regarded as a sop to the Italian media, and sure enough Eddie Irvine's signature was already on a Ferrari contract even as Fisichella and co headed for Fiorano.
So it was with Minardi rather than Ferrari that Fisichella actually made his F1 debut, but he has finally made it to Maranello to bring his career to a close, 226 grands prix later.
Ferrari finished both first and last in Belgium with Kimi Raikkonen and the hapless Luca Badoer, and realistically somewhere about halfway between those two polar opposites would be a satisfactory position for Fisichella in Italy.
Badoer's ten years away from the grid had clearly proved costly, whereas Fisichella is 'race fresh'.
But the difficulty of hopping straight into a new team should not be underestimated.
Even great drivers with a winter of testing behind them can take a few races to settle into a new squad, and Fisichella will be experiencing the 2009 Ferrari for the very first time when he commences practice at Monza.
So don't expect miracles - ironically by moving from the the team that finished last in 2008's constructors' championship to the team that won that title, Fisichella will probably take a step backwards at first, for there is very little chance he will repeat his Spa pole and podium.
Ferrari has a great shot at another win with Raikkonen this weekend, but the Finn will have to beat McLaren in order to do so.
Primarily composed of massive straights linked by chicanes, Monza has few fast corners to unsettle Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen's still not perfect McLarens, but plenty of opportunities for them and the Ferraris to jump on the KERS button.
With 75 per cent of the lap spent at full throttle, that extra boost will be most welcome, and it is actually hard to imagine a non-KERS car winning this race.
Renault could also therefore feature near the front, as it is dusting off its KERS device for the weekend.
The last few weeks have been pretty calamitous for Renault - and the upcoming World Motor Sport Council hearing is a huge dark cloud on the team's horizon - but in between the mayhem the car has been fast enough for Fernando Alonso to take pole in Hungary and challenge for a podium from 13th on the grid at Spa, so who knows what it might achieve in Italy.
There is still a world championship battle going on as well, although the KERS-friendly nature of Monza makes it likely that the Brawn versus Red Bull contest will again take place in the lower reaches of the top ten.
That should work in Jenson Button's favour by minimising the amount of points the likes of Rubens Barrichello, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber can claw back if they are again faster than the championship leader, who still urgently needs to steady the decline of his season to avoid limping to a title he is still clear favourite to win.
Vettel celebrated a sensational wet-weather win for Toro Rosso at Monza 12 months ago, but this weekend will probably be spent nervously listening to his Renault engine, for the young German's run of failures means he is on the brink of an engine change penalty, and Monza is a ferociously punishing track for power units.
Even if he hadn't moved to Ferrari, Fisichella would probably be the centre of attention this weekend, for he turned F1 on its head by taking pole and nearly winning for Force India at Spa and would be expected to repeat that form.
Force India's form in Belgium was no fluke - in its latest configuration that car is clearly dynamite on a low downforce set-up, and Monza requires even lower downforce than Spa.
So there's no reason why it couldn't be the fastest non-KERS car again in Italy, and that's a big opportunity for Fisichella's replacement Tonio Liuzzi.
Of all those twiddling their thumbs on the F1 sidelines, Liuzzi has perhaps been most vocal about his urgent desire to race again, and has tried to keep himself sharp with outings in Speedcar and A1GP.
His underwhelming Red Bull and Toro Rosso years changed perceptions of Liuzzi from the potential superstar he appeared to be in karting and Formula 3000, to an expendable, over-hyped, grid-filler.
Now he can prove which of those characters is the real Liuzzi.
The 28-year-old has a little experience of the VJM02 from testing, and is already at home in the team, so although he will be slightly rusty, things will feel far more familiar for Liuzzi than for Fisichella at Monza.
So while it will be Fisichella in the limelight at the start of the weekend, there's a chance that everyone could be talking about another Italian by the time the Tifosi pack up on Sunday night...
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