J.J. Yeley's Chicagoland Water Adventure

I guess you could say Saturday night's LifeLock.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway for J.J. Yeley (yay yay yay-lee!) was pretty normal.

The No. 96 Hall of Fame Racing team started officially in 40th and finished 24th, but the setbacks along the way incurred from NASCAR make that finish seem a little more impressive.

You see, J.J. Yeley is a fan of cold water. He likes to drink it, especially when sitting inside a hot race car for 400 miles. He's not so much a fan of warm water, though, like the water inside his race car after sitting through inspection in the July sun in the midwest. And so, his team replaced his warm water bag with a cold water bag -- like they've done for nearly every race this season -- just prior to the race.

NASCAR wasn't a fan of the move, though. Because Yeley's car had already gone through inspection and because there wasn't an official present to see the H2O transaction, they got suspicious. Really suspicious.

They took the No. 96 off of pit road, put it back through inspection, and in doing so, didn't really find anything different. It made him late joining the field, and as soon as the green flag dropped, NASCAR called the No. 96 in for a pass through penalty for "Disobeying a NASCAR Request". The move dropped him behind the field and one lap down.

That's a steep penalty for a dude that just simply wants some high quality H2O in his ride -- or at least some water that isn't going to boil his insides.
NASCAR's contention on the issue is that in the past, teams have rolled through inspection with lead poured in the water containers, and following inspection, replaced it with a water bag, thereby eliminating 30 or so pounds from the race car. That was the initial thought with Yeley's issue, but it turns out water was both going in and out.

David Poole of The Charlotte Observer, though, says this type of punishment from NASCAR that seems more like a "Ha, we got the better of them!"-type move is all-too-common in the sport. He even referenced another team that wasn't directly penalized for the way they changed an engine at Infineon Raceway, but has since had to report to the "random" post-race engine tear down for each of the last three events.

That team is A.J. Allmendinger's No. 84, as he was the only driver who changed an engine at Infineon and then had to go through the post-race engine tear down at Chicago. By going through that process, the team isn't able to pack up a hauler and completely go home for at least an hour after all the other teams have left.

And because of that treatment, I think Hall of Fame Racing and J.J. Yeley aren't complaining more about their treatment this weekend for a violation that really wasn't a violation.

You would think that water is just water, but maybe that isn't so in the non-democracy world that we call NASCAR.