Nico Hulkenberg says he had little warning before the front wing failure which caused his heavy crash at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Hulkenberg started strongly and had been running as high as fifth in the opening part of the race before the failure, which saw the front wing collapse and go underneath his Force India. Despite braking heavily Hulkenberg could do little to prevent his car going straight on at Turn 1 and into the tyre barrier, narrowly avoiding Valtteri Bottas' Williams in the process.
"It's a shame we lost the opportunity to get a great result," Hulkenberg said. "I didn't have much warning that there was a problem with the front wing - there was a harsh vibration just before it broke and after that I was heading straight into the barriers. The final impact was not too bad because that part of the track is well protected and it absorbed the energy nicely."
Force India has looked much-improved since the introduction of its B-Spec car at Silverstone but suffered double suspension trouble in Hungary. Sergio Perez had a frightening crash on Friday when his rear suspension failed coming through Turn 11, with his damaged wheel flipping the Force India upside down.
Hulkenberg says Force India will use the summer break to assess what went wrong in Hungary and come back stronger for the race at Spa.
"Up until the accident, things were looking very positive: I had made a great start and was racing with the Red Bulls, which shows the step forward we have made with the B-spec car. The good news is that we have time over the next week to analyse what happened today and get the solutions in place before the summer break.
"Reliability has been a real strength of ours this season so it's unusual for us to have these issues and the team will do its homework before we arrive in Spa. I go into the summer break knowing that we are competitive and that we can have a strong second half of the season."