Why Ferrari needs Boullier

Perhaps Ferrari should phone the actor Bill Murray. After all, he knows better than most what Groundhog Day feels like - stuck in an endless time-loop where no matter how much you alter your circumstances the end result remains steadfastly the same.

The Ferrari Formula 1 team seems stuck in its own version of Groundhog Day. Pretty much since 2009 in fact, when the final remnants of the Michael Schumacher/Jean Todt/Ross Brawn/Rory Byrne era of ultra-success were disbanded.

Ferrari has tried everything: switching drivers, sacking strategists, firing top engineers, technical heads and team principals, even changing presidents. But the cycle of perennial underachievement remains unbroken.

Every F1 team has skeletons lurking in the far corners of its factory, but this one seems paralysed by its own politics - technical teams hamstrung by the fear that they may become the next scapegoat for the failings on track.

Senior management demands answers; middle management manoeuvres; someone (or several people) takes a bullet; and the whole sorry merry-go-round begins again.

Following a disappointing start to 2016 - amid reports that current Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne is so unhappy with results he has swept through the corridors of Maranello demanding answers - the team's top technical bod James Allison has now left the team, after less than three years in post.

Team boss Maurizio Arrivabene refused to acknowledge suggestions that aerodynamicist Dirk de Beer has also gone, though he admits the SF16-H - the car that was supposed to properly challenge Mercedes this year - has barely been updated since May's Spanish Grand Prix.

Try as it might, Ferrari just cannot wake up to the promise of a glorious new day. It's just the same old story over and over again. Everything changes, but everything also stays the same...

There is no doubt Ferrari needs a fundamental restructure, and Arrivabene says he is "clear in mind about what to do with the organisation".

But history suggests yet another Groundhog Day awaits if Ferrari does things its own way.

Time to get on the phone. But not to Bill Murray, or even to the litany of F1 technical talent that Ferrari thinks could be the latest cure for all that ails Maranello.

What Ferrari really needs is a racing director - one with a track record of reorganising a team that has spent a long period in the doldrums.

Ferrari needs someone like Eric Boullier to steady its rocking ship.

McLaren suffered a similar slump to Ferrari's following a drivers' title near miss in 2007 and Lewis Hamilton's inaugural world championship crown in '08.

Ron Dennis's team won races each season between 2009 and '12, but always fell short of proper championship contention.

McLaren missed a trick with double diffusers in 2009, was forced to abandon a disastrous 'octopus' exhaust concept on its '11 car, then introduced a chassis design for the final season of V8 engines in '13 that was really poor and failed to make the podium.

Jenson Button says the team really expected that to be a good year, as McLaren went all-out to design a Red Bull-beater despite winning the final race of 2012 on merit.

This doesn't sound too dissimilar to Ferrari's circumstances between last season and this one - over-reaching in its efforts to catch and overtake Mercedes.

Boullier joined McLaren in 2014 to restructure the team and get it back on track.

His role as racing director has been to analyse the way various departments work, hire new personnel if needs be, and basically organise the team so that McLaren can once again produce good cars that can be properly developed.

Anecdotally it seems he has succeeded. McLaren's technical departments are working cohesively, to a point where chassis conception and development is now strong and consistent again. Team meetings are productive, deficiencies identified in order to progress rather than simply apportion blame.

For a good indication of McLaren's rate of development just look at this season. Despite an enormous horsepower disadvantage it's already near enough the fourth best team on the grid now (in terms of general competitiveness rather than points), even though it ended last season ninth in the world championship.

If the Honda engine could match Ferrari or Mercedes, McLaren would be a frontrunner. Ferrari already has the benefit of a decent engine in the back of its car, thanks to sterling work by new technical head Mattia Binotto and his old department. This is perhaps why he has been chosen (at least for now) to fill Allison's shoes.

Ferrari doesn't have a racing director, but it's the sort of management position it desperately needs - someone who knows racing intimately at the bread-and-butter level, can prioritise what's needed within the team infrastructure to get it working harmoniously on a technical level, and can help shield that team from the higher political machinations that exist above it, all too ready to impatiently overreact while waiting for old wounds to heal.

Boullier has an engineering background, so can understand the workings of technical departments and also how to race-engineer cars; and he has a history in driver management, so knows how to deal with their particular personalities and steer car development towards the areas that matter most to the people who are ultimately depended upon to get results.

His time at Lotus also proved he can juggle the priorities of a team in flux, dealing with unhappy drivers, concerned and unpaid staff, and difficult team owners.

Boullier has spent the last six years of his career bridging the gaps between senior management and the rest of a team.

If it's true that Allison grew frustrated by Marchionne's unrealistic expectations during his time at Ferrari, then I would argue Boullier would have been the ideal person to manage that expectation properly, and perhaps prevent Ferrari facing a major rule change without one of F1's top technical talents in its tent.

It is clear Ferrari needs to conduct a serious overhaul. Groundhog Day has gone on for far too long.

But to do that properly it needs someone who knows what's important in racing and is able to filter out some of F1's persistent noise for the ears of those that call the shots.

It needs a no-nonsense racing person to steer the course, rather than financiers, corporate managers or sponsorship executives who know how to do business deals but don't really know their heave dampers from their brake calipers.

To get back on track Ferrari needs to stop firing technical personnel and hire someone who can augment their talents and get them all working together properly, while managing the higher expectations that threaten to undo them at every turn.

Ferrari needs Eric Boullier.