Popular Youtuber Parker Nirenstein of Vehicle Virgins recently discovered that his Lamborghini Huracan would no longer engage launch control mode, leading him down a road which would reveal a reportedly hard-imposed limit of 250 launches in the vehicle’s lifetime.
Launching a vehicle can be extremely taxing on any platform, let alone a powerful supercar like the Huracan. With a crisp 28,000 miles on the odometer, Nirenstein reported a check engine light had popped up on the dash, producing several intermittent codes that he wanted to have checked out. He took the car to VF Engineering in Anaheim, California, a popular supercar shop for troubleshooting the problem.
At first, VF thought that the issue could be related to either a gas-tank sensor or camshaft position sensor malfunction, both of which had stored faults when the car’s ECUs were scanned. However, as the shop troubleshot the vehicle’s issue further, it was found that the vehicle had performed too many launches in its short lifespan.
After checking the transmission control unit for faults, it was discovered that Nirenstein had utilized the car’s built-in launch control function 250 times (or roughly once every 112 miles of the vehicle’s ownership). Though this doesn’t mean that the car was actually launched that many times, rather that it was simply placed into launch control mode on at least 250 separate occasions. This isn’t exactly surprising, given the YouTube celebrity’s previous videos, including one titled “How to do launch control in a Lamborghini Huracan“.
On a dual-clutch gearbox like what’s found in the Huracan, a vehicle is placed into launch control mode by placing the car into a preset “sport” setting. While stopped and in gear, the driver can then place their foot on the brake and accelerator pedal at the same time while the car revs to a preset point (4,200 RPM for the Huracan). The vehicle’s software will then calculate the requested torque and allot set values for various components on the car to prepare for the launch. Upon releasing the brake, the dual-clutch system engages and begins to put the power down, propelling the vehicle from 0-60 in faster times than if the driver were to just ham-foot the gas pedal.
It would make sense for an automaker to warn about launching a vehicle, especially one with as much power as the Huracan. Nirenstein contracted VF Engineering to supercharge his Lamborghini some time ago, meaning that the power output on his particular vehicle was much more rigorous than a stock application.
Not all automakers have such a low limit (most with no limit at all). Porsche’s insanely reliable PDK dual-clutch gearbox, for example, is a “lifetime” part that reportedly sustained more than 1,000 full-throttle launches with zero failures. On the other side of the spectrum, Nissan caused a big controversy over launch control-related gearbox warranty with the introduction of the GTR, after it voided warranties of owners who performed launches that destroyed their transmissions. A thread on Reddit also explored the surprisingly popular phenomenon of OEM-equipped launch control limitations.
We reached out to the manufacturer to confirm any limits and how the warranty is affected, however, Lamborghini has not responded as of the time of writing.