By alley - Aug 31, 2017, 9:35 AM ET

FIA aiming for Halo on 2018 Formula E car

The FIA is aiming to implement the Halo on the season five Formula E car to race from 2018, coinciding with powertrain changes.

The next season of Formula E – season four – gets underway in December and will be the last year of the current chassis. From the 2018-19 season, a new chassis will be introduced that includes a powertrain that no longer requires a mid-race car change. After confirmation that the 2018 Formula 2 car will include a Halo – matching the introduction date for Formula 1 – FIA safety director Laurent Mekies revealed the next categories that will use the cockpit protection device.

"The implementation plan - again being conscious that it is going to be a very large challenge – is F1 in 2018,

F2 in 2018

," Mekies told RACER. "We are trying to get Formula E season five, which means June 2018 and is as hard in terms of pressure of timing. Then we plan to have hopefully a new F3 in 2019 and a new F4 in 2020. That's where we are right now, so it will keep us busy for a bit!"

And Mekies says the one of the priorities for the FIA at this stage is to get the suppliers in place for the various championships to work with.

"F1 will need to have a suitable supplier, and so does F2. It might be the same but we don't know at this stage. So what's going to happen in practical terms is that we are going to define a standard for the Halo as we do for most safety equipment and crash tests etc. And then from that point all of the suppliers from around the world will be free to try and homologate the Halo, and at that stage it will be a homologated part on the technical list.

"From that list any championship in the world can pick up the list and say 'I'm going to use that one.' So that is the process; we are fast-forwarding that process to make sure we have at least a couple of suppliers that can do that. There is a lot of people very interested but in the sort timeframe not so many people have the technology and the knowhow to react so we are engaged with quite a few of them now."