Toto Wolff took a less-than-subtle swipe at Christian Horner as he insisted his Mercedes team has been "constantly" attracting staff from its Formula 1 rivals.
Red Bull have been vocal about their arrivals in recent times. Several top engineers have been signed by the defending champions to man their expansive new Powertrains project.
Ben Hodgkinson spent a long time with Mercedes but was poached to become technical director of Red Bull's engine project. Lewis Hamilton's former race engineer Phil Prew was another tempted to make the switch.
Speaking to reporters at Silverstone, Mercedes chief Wolff brushed off any suggestion that it was a concern, explaining that it is normal for people to make such moves in the paddock.
"I've said before that it is a very ambitious project with Red Bull Powertrains and is a very courageous project," he said. "HPP [Mercedes' High Performance Powertrains] has 1,000 employees and we lost some to Red Bull in the same way we lost some to Ferrari and we lost some to Renault.
And there is another reason why Wolff says he is not concerned about losing such talent. He insisted there are plenty of others coming in through the door – Mercedes just aren't shouting from the rooftops about it.
In a clear dig at Red Bull, he added: "We are not bragging about having people join us from Red Bull. We have not mentioned the names but we have a constant influx of Red Bull people as we have from the other teams.
"That is happening all the time and so the people they've hired, we wish them the best. Some of them were retired in our organisation and ended up there in leading positions but that's fine, so they've been given a second life."
Wolff recently explained he has a similar outlook to the New Zealand rugby union team when it comes to hiring. "It can be complex, it can be multifaceted, we tolerate odd people, or edgy people, that's fine," he said.
"We want to have the best ones, and they're complex. But the fallback will always be the All-Blacks' policy: 'No d***heads.’ If you lack the basic values of integrity, loyalty and truthfulness then you shouldn't be here."
