The TS19 represented a clean departure from the TS14/TS16 lineage. Surtees and engineer Ken Sears aimed for a more competitive package, and the car arrived in time for 1976 after the team skipped the Brazilian Grand Prix to allow its completion. The Durex sponsorship deal, while commercially controversial, gave the team a level of financial stability it had lacked through the two preceding seasons.
Australian Alan Jones was signed as lead driver for 1976, with American Brett Lunger in a second car carrying Campari sponsorship. A third TS19 was later sold to Henri Pescarolo's Team Norev.
Jones was the standout performer. He finished fifth in Belgium and at the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, and fourth in Japan. At the German Grand Prix the team was caught up in the events surrounding Niki Lauda's near-fatal accident at the Nürburgring: Jones finished tenth while Lunger, along with drivers from other cars, stopped to help pull Lauda from his burning Ferrari. Lunger himself crashed at the Austrian Grand Prix while running in the points three laps from the finish.
Jones's result at Japan — fourth place — capped a seven-point season for the team, placing Surtees tenth in the Constructors' Championship.
Pescarolo's Team Norev raced its customer TS19 at the Monaco Grand Prix and a handful of subsequent events. Pescarolo scored a ninth place finish at Austria and completed several other races.
Jones's performances attracted attention from other teams and he left for Shadow, replaced by Italian Vittorio Brambilla on the Durex car and Austrian Hans Binder in a second entry. The season produced a series of points finishes: Brambilla finished seventh in Argentina, seventh in South Africa, fourth at the Belgian Grand Prix (his best result of the year), and sixth in Canada. He also scored fifth at the German Grand Prix and eighth at Great Britain. Binder occasionally contributed, finishing eleventh in South Africa and Argentina.
A succession of additional drivers — Larry Perkins, Patrick Tambay, Vern Schuppan, and Lamberto Leoni — also appeared in the second car across the season with limited success. Surtees finished eleventh in the Constructors' Championship with six points.
Melchester Racing ran a privately purchased TS19 for Tony Trimmer at the 1977 British Grand Prix, but Trimmer failed to pre-qualify.
Brambilla was retained for 1978 alongside British pay driver Rupert Keegan, but neither the TS19 nor the team scored championship points during the season. The TS19 was used at the opening rounds before the new Surtees TS20 became available; the TS19's final race was the Belgian Grand Prix, where Keegan failed to qualify.
A notable non-racing event occurred on 25 April 1978 at Brands Hatch during a private test session in the car, when musician George Harrison drove a lap in the TS19 — one of the more unusual footnotes in the car's history.
Unable to secure sufficient funding, the Surtees Racing Organisation withdrew from Formula One after the 1978 season, though a car for 1979 had been completed. The TS19 and TS20 were briefly campaigned in the British Aurora (formerly Formula 5000) series in 1979 before the organisation shut down permanently.
The TS19 was the most successful car of the Surtees organisation's final chapter, demonstrating that the team retained the ability to build a competitive car when adequately resourced. Alan Jones's results in 1976 were a significant factor in attracting the attention that launched his subsequent career at Shadow and Williams, where he would become Formula One world champion in 1980. The Durex livery has remained a curiosity in the history of motorsport sponsorship, representing a period when Formula One's commercial rules allowed advertising categories that would later be restricted or refused.