Oscar Piastri says he hasn’t been dwelling on his past with Alpine after a frustrated radio message aimed at one of the team’s drivers during the Austrian Grand Prix.

The McLaren driver was inconvenienced by Alpine’s drivers on three separate occasions during last weekend’s grand prix. After the last, which involved Pierre Gasly, a frustrated Piastri remarked on his radio: “Gasly still manages to find a way to fuck me up all these years later, huh?”

The message was widely circulated on social media as an example of Piastri’s frustration towards his former team. Piastri was a member of Alpine’s junior programme until 2022, when he caused a stir by publicly repudiating the team’s claim he would make his debut as a Formula 1 driver for them the following year.

Piastri quit the team to join McLaren and has raced for them since 2023. While McLaren has gone from strength to strength, winning last year’s constructors’ championship and leading the standings this year, Alpine lies at the bottom of the points table.

However Piastri said he’s given no thought to his time at Alpine recently. “It’s obviously a long time ago now,” he told media including RaceFans at Silverstone.

After being held up by Gasly in qualifying, Piastri was forced off the track by the other Alpine of Franco Colapinto, who was penalised. He then lost time lapping Gasly at turn one, which prompted his frustrated remark to race engineer Tom Stallard.

“I think the comments on the radio, it was just the coincidence that the qualifying [incident] was obviously an Alpine and then I kind of got impeded by both in the race to an extent,” he said. “So it was more just a coincidence.

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“But no, I’ve not really thought about it much recently. Obviously when I joined Formula 1 there was kind of the comparisons and the directions that each team has taken, but now I honestly haven’t thought about it for over 12 months, probably.”

Piastri joined Alpine after winning the 2019 Formula Renault Eurocup, then added another two titles in consecutive seasons in Formula 3 and Formula 2. He was working for Alpine as a reserve driver when he grabbed the chance to join McLaren.

In his third season at McLaren, Piastri is now leading the F1 standings. He said it “feels pretty familiar” so far to his success in junior championships.

“I think the championships I have won in my junior career have all been in different ways, so I don’t think there’s kind of one way of going about it. I’ve learned lessons from every year I’ve gone racing [and] the championships I’ve won as well.

“So it doesn’t feel that different in all honesty. I’ve just been trying to keep the same approach. We’re still quite early in the year so there’s still a lot to go on and a lot to happen but it feels like pretty familiar territory from where I have been in my career so I’m not really treating it any differently.”

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