Christian Horner bit back at Toto Wolff as tension rises between Red Bull and Mercedes, declaring: "I'd rather be a terrier than a Wolff".
War broke out in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix paddock on Thursday when Max Verstappen accused George Russell of lying to get him punished by the stewards at the previous race in Qatar, prompting a furious and lengthy response from the Brit.
Mercedes boss Wolff even got involved to slam Horner's leadership and blasted the Red Bull chief for not putting a tighter leash on Verstappen.
The Austrian made his attack personal by calling his rival boss a "yapping little terrier".
Speaking a press conference on Friday, Horner was presented with an opportunity to bite back at those remarks.
But he said: "I'm not going to rise to the bait of that. Everybody manages their teams in different ways. We've won 122 races, 14 world championships - I think we're doing alright."
He also took the opportunity to crack a joke and smiled as he said: "I love terriers! I think they're great dogs. I've had four of them.
I've had a couple of Airedales, the king of the terriers, and I had a couple of West Highland terriers called Bernie and Flavio. The good things about terriers is they're tremendously loyal.
"Bernie, he was an aggressive little dog - he'd go for anybody. And Flavio was a bit more chilled out and probably ate a bit too much.
To be called a terrier, is that such a bad thing? They're not afraid of having a go at the bigger dogs. I'd rather be a terrier than a Wolff, maybe."
Wolff and Horner have a long history of taking shots at one another.
The Red Bull boss largely resisted the temptation to poke fun at the Mercedes chief but did suggest his focus should be on Lewis Hamilton's farewell appearance for the team rather than leaping to the defence of his other driver.
He said: "There's a sort of a love-hate relationship where Toto loves to hate me. It's one of those things.
I would have assumed that he would have enough on his plate as it's Lewis' last race for that team. I think they should be celebrating that rather than focusing on other aspects."
There remains some mystery around what was actually said between Verstappen and Russell and both have told different versions of events during and after that meeting with the stewards' in Qatar.
But Horner has no doubt in his mind at all that it went down the way his driver said it did.
He added: "Max is a very straight shooter - he just tells you exactly how he sees it, he tells the truth and what he feels...
Max does nothing but tell the truth, so I believe 100 percent what he said to be accurate."
