Two of the FORCE aerodynamicists who worked on the car during its countless hours of Wind tunnel testing were a young Ross Brawn and Adrian Newey.

The car debuted at the 1986 San Marino Grand Prix and was driven by 1980 World Drivers' Champion Alan Jones from Australia, and his new teammate Patrick Tambay of France.

They were some 4 months behind after some initial tests to turbocharge Goddard's old 4-cylinder BDA engine used in sportscars and lower formulae proved to be a failure (Duckworth had wanted to use the 4-cylinder as he believed they were more economical and compact than a V6.

Jones claimed he was able to point out the "block of flats" rear wings run by Benetton (BMW), Williams (Honda), Arrows (BMW) and Ferrari, yet the slowest of them, the Ferrari F1/86 of Michele Alboreto, was still around 20 km/h (12 mph) faster in a straight line than the Lola's which were running the bare minimum wing settings for speed on the straights while still having some grip in the turns.

With the lack of straight line speed, the closest time either driver could post to Teo Fabi's pole winning BMW powered Benetton B186 was Tambay who was 3.73 seconds slower.

The THL2s best qualifying position was 6th by Tambay at the Hungaroring for the 1986 Hungarian Grand Prix where the tight nature of the circuit meant a good handling car was more important than outright power.