LOUDON, N.H. – Fuel mileage wasn’t the only recurring theme to strike Sunday’s New Hampshire 300.

A pair of other recent NASCAR Winston Cup conversations saw a different type of fuel sprinkled on their fire during the running of the race at New Hampshire International Speedway.

Fight nice, gentlemen

First came the latest round of discussion regarding the “gentlemen’s agreement.”

Two unwritten rules have long governed drivers’ behavior when a yellow flag appears. Although racing back to the start-finish line is legal, lead-lap drivers typically agree not to pass the driver ahead of them unless it could be the end of the race.

Also, the leader often gives lapped cars the courtesy of slowing dramatically so those drivers may pass him and get back on the lead lap.

Jeff Gordon and Greg Biffle were at the center of a controversy regarding the latter situation Sunday. Two mid-race cautions appeared in close succession. On the initial restart, Biffle, who was at the front of the short line of lapped cars, backed off and allowed the leader Gordon to grab a healthy advantage.

Biffle was approximately 15-car lengths behind Gordon when the yellow condition returned shortly thereafter. Rather than let off the gas and yield to Biffle, Gordon beat him back to the stripe, keeping him one lap down.

As Gordon slowed going into the first turn, Biffle raced up and brushed the four-time champion’s bumper. On the next restart, as the two sped to the green flag side-by-side, Biffle bumped into Gordon again, briefly regaining his lost lap before a miffed Gordon motored past two laps later.

At that point, NASCAR ordered Biffle, car owner Jack Roush and crew chief Randy Goss to its trailer for consultation after the race.

Biffle said that NASCAR exonerated him after hearing the recent Pepsi 400 at Daytona winner’s side of the story.

“That’s (bull). I don’t race like that. We had an agreement,” said Biffle. “I let him go. Then he didn’t let me get my lap back.

“We get along good. I respect the guy and the team. They’re just two-faced.”

As it turned out, Biffle enjoyed both a rebuttal and the last laugh.

Jamie McMurray later allowed him to drive past and get back on the lead lap. Biffle soldiered on to a 10th-place finish, while Gordon wound up 24th.

Gordon roundly criticized Robby Gordon (no relation) for passing Kevin Harvick on his way to the yellow flag to gain a position, and ultimately the win, at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., last month.

Look out below

McMurray was involved in the scariest moment of the day, one that bore resemblance to a recent incident at Daytona.

His car vibrated violently as it sputtered down the front straightaway on lap 198 before spinning rear end-first into the turn one retaining wall.

A piece of the bumper bearing the name of his sponsor, Havoline, flew off the damaged Dodge Intrepid and sailed over a catch fence. Television replays showed that it narrowly missed a group of fans walking in front of the grandstand. One man, who was not wearing a shirt, turned around to look at the debris that just missed him before raising his arms almost triumphantly in the air.

“Something broke. I’m done. I know the car’s done,” McMurray said.

Perhaps that was for the best. At the Pepsi 400 two weekends ago, one Daytona fan suffered minor injuries when the hood of Robby Gordon’s car, damaged in an earlier accident, flew over a fence and into the crowd.

That incident caused some observers to lobby NASCAR to take a closer look at its policy of allowing battered cars to return to the track.

Spectator deaths at Indy style races at Michigan Speedway and Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte in recent years brought previous attention to the issue of car parts flying into the crowd.

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