WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. Chris Buescher may have entered this weekend as a sleeper to win the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium.

However, after a stellar performance on Saturday, hell enter Sundays event with a strong case for victory.

The RFK Racing driver qualified second out of the 39 entries at the quarter-mile bullring oval. Following time trials, Buescher went unmatched in his heat to score a wire-to-wire victory and an outside front row starting spot for Sundays main event.

Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott starts on pole.

While on paper Bueschers night ended near perfect, the start was a different story. Through the first practice session, the No. 17 Ford sat 30th on the speed charts.

His RFK team, however, was prepared to rectify the problem.

We made big changes. The team made really good changes and just had a game plan coming in, Buescher explained. We ran a lot of simulation leading up to this. We dont typically do a ton of preliminary work from me as a driver in the simulator. Its typically a lot more after races, but given my track record at these quarter miles, I figured better bite off into that one.

I ran a lot more there and went through all three of our cars and tried to pick out the good and the bad, and our team did a good job of having changes ready so that when we got here and realized we were just way too loose, we were able to make quick adjustments to get in the ballpark, Buescher continued.

In our second session out there we were able to get on the other side of it and we were able to bring that back and then also just kind of tweak on some braking stuff at the same time and just got it to where it was a whole different race car for qualifying and for that heat race.

Bueschers teammates also showed strength during the heat races as Brad Keselowski finished second in the first heat while newcomer Ryan Preece fought his way to third in the fourth and final heat.

While each heat race was only 25 laps, Sundays finale is slated to be 200 laps. With it being the series first stop to Bowman Gray since 1971, theres still plenty of unknowns.

One of those is how tire wear will play out. Despite the small sample size, Buescher felt he was able to experiment with longer runs and find a baseline for what may work from a strategical standpoint.

I believe its gonna be colder yet tomorrow, but I think were gonna get to the point where youre gonna chase tire wear, Buescher said. Were gonna try to take care of stuff. We tried in the heat race. We tried to get a couple car lengths out and just kind of conserve from there. I think it did work.

We had something left at the end just to be able to get that little bit of gap, but I would imagine that we are gonna see it fall off.

I think we just hope that you can control it as a driver. If you can make a difference in that fall off, thats ideal. If we all fall off the same no matter what you do, then its hard to make a difference from behind the wheel, or as big a difference, but I feel like you can be smart about it and know when to push and make decisions at the right times that if the tire will react to that, then itll make comers and goers throughout the evening.