The late season announcement by Lotus meant that there were almost no seats left with one of the top teams (McLaren, Ferrari and Williams), leaving Piquet with the unenviable possibility of not having a drive for 1990. However, the Benetton team had a seat become available when they decided not to retain fill-in driver Emanuele Pirro. After two lacklustre seasons at Lotus, Piquet was forced to sign an incentive based payment-by-results deal with Benetton, who had exclusive use of the factory Ford HB4 V8 engine. This saw Piquet return to something like his former top form in . Despite a handful of lacklustre performances and sometimes being outperformed by fast Italian teammate Alessandro Nannini who would tragically lose his right forearm in a helicopter crash following the Spanish Grand Prix forcing his F1 retirement (his arm was surgically re-attached), Piquet scored two wins in the last two races of the season. The first in Japan was somewhat inherited after Senna had taken out Prost's Ferrari at the first turn, and both Gerhard Berger (McLaren) and Mansell (Ferrari) retired. It was his first win since the 1987 Italian Grand Prix. The second was just two weeks later at the last race of the season in Australia when after a great drive, Piquet survived a spirited, but fair, challenge from the V12 Ferrari of Mansell to win what was the 500th World Championship Formula One Grand Prix. His 18 points from the last two races saw him move from 7th in the standings (25 points) to finishing 3rd in the championship with 43. Piquet and Gerhard Berger both scored 43 points (Piquet had scored 44 but was forced to drop 1 point under the "Best 11" rule of the time), but Piquet's two wins, where Berger won none, saw him finish third.