Piastri is the protagonist of a brilliant Google advertisement: and there’s yet another dig at Alpine

An advertisement…from Oscar While waiting to find out if 2026 will be the good year to be able to win that world title that eluded him last season to the advantage of his teammate Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri may have already won first place for the best actor’s performance of the year, which shouldn’t leave you surprised, given his name. In fact, the Australian from McLaren was chosen by Google – the munificent sponsor of the Woking team – as a testimonial in the new commercial promoting the Google Pixel. The result was an ingenious video that has already gone viral on social networks and in which the most attentive fans could not fail to notice an ‘Easter egg’ which once again refers to Piastri’s now famous choice in the summer of 2022 to refuse – publicly, via a tweet that has become iconic – the promotion to Alpine’s regular driver, of which he was third driver at the time, and then subsequently moved to McLaren. The advertising is all played on Piastri’s lack of expressiveness in showing joy for victories – thus reiterating this sort of ‘Iceman 2.0’ image that the Melbourne native now seems to have accepted for himself – combined however with the #81’s great desire to always reach the top. “I know I don’t always show it, but winning excites me – we hear Piastri say at the beginning of the commercial – so when I see the possibility of taking a step forward, I change things. I mean: why want something that isn’t the best?”. Just as Piastri pronounces this sentence, here’s the gem: we see workers removing a painting from a wall that portrays an Alpine landscape (Alpine…) to hang another that portrays a… papaya (McLaren’s nickname). Fans on social networks wasted no time, immediately noticing yet another ironic dig from Piastri towards his former team.