Piquet's father, a Brazilian government minister, wanted him to become a professional tennis player and arranged training in the United States. Piquet showed promise but left the sport, turning to karting in secret under his mother's maiden name "Piquet" — misspelled from "Piket" — to hide the hobby from his disapproving father. He won the Brazilian national karting championship in 1971 and 1972 and the national Formula Vee championship in 1976. On the advice of Emerson Fittipaldi, he moved to Europe and in the 1978 British Formula Three season broke Jackie Stewart's record for the most wins in a single season.
Piquet made his Formula One debut for Ensign at the 1978 German Grand Prix, then drove for the McLaren B.S. Fabrications outfit at three subsequent events before joining Brabham for the final race of the year.
Piquet remained at Brabham from 1979 to 1985, forming a productive partnership with designer Gordon Murray. After finishing runner-up in 1980, he claimed his first championship in 1981. The decisive moment came at the final round — the Caesars Palace Grand Prix in Las Vegas — where he finished fifth, dehydrated and physically spent in the desert heat, clinching the title by a single point over Carlos Reutemann.
In 1982, the new BMW turbo engine in the Brabham BT50 proved powerful but unreliable. His only win came at the Canadian Grand Prix, BMW's first Formula One victory. At the German Grand Prix that year, Piquet led before colliding with Eliseo Salazar and then physically attacking him at the trackside in front of television cameras.
The 1983 season brought his second championship. Piquet ran the new arrow-shaped BT52 with the BMW turbo, won the opening round in Brazil, and fought Alain Prost down to the final race in South Africa. Prost retired on lap 35 and Piquet's third place was sufficient to take the title by two points. It was the first time a turbocharged car had won the World Championship.
A move to Williams in 1986 paired Piquet with Nigel Mansell in one of the sport's most fractious partnerships. Piquet made no secret of his low opinion of Mansell, publicly calling him "an uneducated blockhead" and also insulting Mansell's wife. On track, the two were evenly matched and took points from each other throughout the season, enabling Alain Prost to win a close championship for McLaren. Piquet won four races that year — more than in any of his title-winning campaigns — but finished runner-up.
In 1987, Piquet adopted what he described as a "percentage driving policy," taking podium finishes consistently rather than going flat out at every race. Mansell showed superior raw pace and won more races, but a serious back injury sustained in a qualifying accident at Suzuka ruled the Englishman out of the final two rounds. Piquet secured his third and final championship, having never once formally topped the season standings until the very end. A crash at Imola during the same year left Piquet with permanent damage to his depth perception — he later revealed he had secretly visited a hospital in Milan every two weeks throughout the championship season and believed the injury compromised his driving for the rest of his career.
Two seasons at Lotus from 1988 to 1989 were disappointments. The 1988 car carried the same Honda V6 specification as the dominant McLarens but was poorly designed; Piquet managed only three third-place finishes. The 1989 car used a naturally aspirated Judd V8 and Piquet failed to qualify for the Belgian Grand Prix for the first time since 1982.
Piquet joined Benetton in 1990 on a payment-by-results contract. He took two wins in the final two races of the year — Japan and Australia — after the title contenders ahead of him retired or collided. His twenty-third and last Formula One win came at Montreal in 1991 when Mansell stalled his Williams on the final lap while leading. He retired from Formula One in January 1992.
Piquet attempted the Indianapolis 500 in 1992 but suffered serious foot and ankle injuries in a testing accident. He returned in 1993 and qualified, but retired after 38 laps with engine failure. He also raced sports cars at various points: he won the 1981 1000 km Nürburgring alongside Hans-Joachim Stuck driving a BMW M1, and drove at Le Mans in 1996 and 1997 with a McLaren F1 GTR, finishing eighth overall in 1996.
Piquet was known for using abusive language about rivals and others in the sport, most notoriously calling Mansell an "uneducated blockhead," falsely accusing Ayrton Senna of homosexuality, and using a racial slur when discussing Lewis Hamilton in a 2021 Brazilian podcast interview. The comment resurfaced in 2022 and resulted in Piquet being banned from the Formula One paddock. The ban was lifted in late 2024.
A three-time champion across three different decades of technical regulation — the ground-effects era, the first turbo era, and the late-turbo period — Piquet's record places him among the greatest of his generation. His development partnership with Gordon Murray at Brabham and his political nous in outmaneuvering faster rivals for championships distinguish his career as much as outright pace.