BROOKLYN, Mich -- Tony Stewart was none too pleased Saturday with David Gilliland, who caused considerable damage to Stewart's No. 20 Chevrolet during the final Nextel Cup practice prior to this Sunday's Citizen's Bank 400 at Michigan International Speedway.

The accident occurred when Gilliland was headed to pit road in his No. 38 Ford at the end of a long run on old tires. Stewart was just coming out of the pits on new tires.

"He checks up at the end of the straightaway, and we run into him," a frustrated Stewart said. "It's really, really easy to see it. They've got two different cameras views of it, and he never stuck his hand out of the window [to signal he was going into the pits]. It really screwed up a really good racecar for [Sunday]. It didn't need to happen. It shouldn't happen."

Crew members from all three Joe Gibbs Racing teams worked hard to repair front-end damage to Stewart's machine, pounding away on it. But the Nextel Cup garage closed 90 minutes after practice, so they didn't have much time. They will be allowed to resume working on the car when the garage opens again at 7 a.m. Sunday.

Stewart said he was hoping NASCAR officials would talk to Gilliland about what happened.

"I went to [Cup Series director] John Darby and asked if he'd bring him in and talk to him about it. [Gilliland said] he doesn't know why he didn't do it [meaning hand signal]," Stewart said. "That's the part that scares me. At this level, you should know why you're doing the things you're doing. And he's a nice kid. The thing is, I actually like the kid.

"But this is twice now that he's crashed us, and both times he doesn't have an answer for why. That's the part that scares you as a driver."

Stewart said Gilliland apologized to him afterward, but said that isn't enough.

"It wasn't the apology I was looking for; it was the why did it happen? That's the part that worries me and scares me the most," Stewart said. "Why did that happen? There wasn't any reason for it to happen. ... It's like we've talked about before: there is more to being a racecar driver than driving a racecar. You have to be able to race with 42 other guys. That's not drive with 42 other guys, but race with them. When you make mistakes like that, it doesn't make the other 42 other guys you're racing with very comfortable every time they see your car number."

Stewart wondered openly if Gilliland, who has only 29 career Cup starts and made the jump to the Cup level last year after only limited experience in the Busch Series, is truly qualified to be driving at the Cup level for Robert Yates Racing.

"We went in the trailer and talked about it, and hopefully it will wake him up a little bit," Stewart said. "I want to be on this kid's side, but it's hard to be on his side when you see him on the track and you see the mistakes he makes week in and week out. That's not what you do at this level.

"That's why you have the Busch Series. That's why you have the Truck Series. That's why you go through those growing pains in those series before you get to the premier series in NASCAR. It doesn't mean you're not going to make mistakes here, but there's a common variable here. You look at every race, and if there's somebody that's having a bad day, it's normally him. At some point everybody has to look at, why is this happening? It's all right if he has a bad day on his own, but when he starts causing other people to have a bad day for a reason he doesn't have an answer for, that starts raising a red flag."