Despite Roger Penske’s best efforts, it appears that the Audi R18 LMP1 will remain shelved for the foreseeable future.

There was some hope that a privateer would pick up the Le Mans program once Audi withdrew from sports-car racing after a 2015 Volkswagen emissions scandal forced the marque to focus on eco-friendly Formula E instead. According to several reports on motorsport.com, Penske approached Audi about entering the car as a privateer but couldn’t reach an agreement.

"I talked about if we could get a privateer (effort) with some of those cars," Penske said. "But under the current situation with Audi, all the things they’re going through, they just said they’ve got enough eyeballs on them, they don’t need to be showing up at Le Mans.

"I’d love to run at Le Mans, but if I did, I’d love to run at the front."

The R18 won its final start at Bahrain in 2016, but Audi officials have maintained that a 2017 spec was never fully developed beyond a model scale. Those same officials have also stated that no classic spec would be entered in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Penske has long been interested in returning to the sport and has been seeking a manufacturer partner to run a DPi in the IMSA Weathertech Sports Car Series. Juan Pablo Montoya and Helio Castroneves have been tabbed as the likely drivers for such a program.

"We’d like to, and we’re trying to put all the pieces together now," Penske said. "Hopefully we’ll have something (decided) midsummer if we’re going to go.

"If we do it, we’ve got to be ready to go for it next year. I don’t want to wait another year, to be honest. We’ve waited a year now, and we have a couple of options -- and each one of them are good ones -- but we just have to see which one is going to be the best.

"If we did a sports-car program, Montoya would be top of the list to drive for us, and I’ve told him that."

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