It is understood that Lawrence Stroll has ruled out Christian Horner moving to Aston Martin.

The former Red Bul boss has been linked with a number of teams ever since he was fired in the summer. In recent weeks he was linked with Aston Martin, thereby reuniting him with Adrian Newey, with whom he won countless titles for the Austrian team.

Despite denials from the Silverstone-based outfit the speculation continued, and then, on Wednesday came a press release...

However, Horner wasn't mentioned, instead Newey takes on the role of team principal alongside his technical responsibilities, while Andy Cowell takes on the new role of chief strategy officer.

Stroll is subsequently understood to have addressed team members at which time he insisted that recruiting Horner was "not happening".

While many believe that Newey's new role might compromise his 'main job', the design guru insists that this isn't the case.

"To be perfectly honest, it became very evident that, with the challenge of the '26 PU and Andy's skillset in terms of helping the three-way relationship between Honda, Aramco and ourselves, it is absolutely his skillset," the Briton told Sky Sports in terms of Cowell's move. "So he very magnanimously volunteered to be heavily involved in that through the first part of '26.

"That left a kind of, 'OK, who's going to be TP?'," he continued. "And since I'm going to be doing all the early races anyway, it doesn't actually particularly change my workload because I'm there anyway so I may as well pick up that bit."

Meanwhile it is claimed that talk of a rift between Newey and Horner is wide of the mark, and that the former left Red Bull because of the internal politics and not the so-called Horner saga.

In fact, the pair are said to be on good terms and recently attended an Oasis gig with their wives.

Horner is looking to return to F1 but it is understood he is seeking a team in which he can invest some of the pay-off he received from Red Bull following his sacking.