DOVER, Del. -- A year ago this weekend, Brian Vickers sat in a hospital bed with IVs plugged into both arms, his future as a Sprint Cup Series driver the furthest thing from his mind.

Sunday, Vickers stood on pit road at Dover International Speedway -- where he stepped away from his No. 83 Red Bull Racing Toyota and looked up and down its rumpled-end-to-end left side and just grinned.

"That was a wild start," Vickers said at the end of the FedEx 400 benefiting Autism Speaks. He laughed as he recalled his car's wildly careening path across the frontstretch, where he slapped the inside wall, flush and with pretty significant force.

"It definitely messed the car up some, as you can see -- and I'm sure we lost a lot," Vickers said. "But the guys did a good job getting it fixed."

And once they did, Vickers showed a huge amount of heart to back up the ardent effort crew chief Ryan Pemberton and Vickers' race team put into the day. So there was a fair amount of emotion all around the Red Bull camp at day's end, when the full weight of this anniversary sank in.

It wasn't just any old top-five -- even given the fact that Vickers' last such finish had come some 20 months ago, in August 2009 when he won at Michigan on his way to a berth in the Chase.

"I really do [feel great]," Vickers said, a little emotion clouding his voice. "It's a special race for me. Last year, I didn't make it here. Last year, I was laying in the hospital with IVs in both arms when this race was going around, watching it on TV. So it feels pretty good to finish it -- and finish it well."

It was in the days leading up to Dover in May 2010 that Vickers discovered discomfort he was feeling was being caused by blood clots. The correction, which included surgery, caused Vickers to sit out the rest of the 2010 season.

And it caused Pemberton, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses as he stood near his car in Dover's post-race inspection line, to really pause and reflect on the last 12 months.

Pemberton laughed, initially, when he was asked to look back on the last year and what this finish meant -- but he quickly got serious.

"You know," the crew chief said. "It's one of those things where you get real, real greedy real, real quick and sometimes you've got to remember -- you go back to a year ago, right here, of putting a spare driver in the car.

"You come in on Friday morning and you're fitting a seat and putting a driver in, and you haven't even talked to your real driver -- he's in a hospital somewhere. And then you bounce around, you know, with drivers that are good guys, but not the quarterback you need, you know what I mean?"

But now they've got that guy back, in Vickers. This season has been an 11-race process to get to this first top-five since 2009 -- 61 races ago.

"And as soon as you get your driver back then you just want to go and be better than you were last time, and you forget about it," Pemberton said. "I sometimes have to sit down and think about where we were and what the whole team -- all of Red Bull -- has been through and where we're potentially at, right now."

Sitting 27th in the standings, Vickers really needs to get up to speed and to the point where he can win -- preferably a couple times in the next 15 races -- to earn a wild-card berth in the Chase if he can also get back into the top 20 in the points.

Vickers wouldn't go there, but finishing like he did Sunday -- after a two-tire gamble on the last pit stop turned a day that started so horribly and where he never got into the top 10 before scoring his first top-five of the season -- was a significant accomplishment.

"We've still got a little way to go -- four more spots to get [before we win], you know what I mean?" Vickers said. "But we're really close and I'm very proud of the guys.

"The biggest thing is, we've had cars this good all year and we've run top five and top 10 in every race we've finished -- we just haven't finished that many of 'em. It seems like something always happens to us. I thought something was going to get us again, at the beginning of the race [Sunday], but luckily we battled back from it and had a good finish."

The recovery was no small feat, after the typical-for-Dover frontstretch jingle immediately after the opening green flag.

"I was going to get under Kevin [Harvick] and he swerved to miss somebody and I swerved to miss him and got into the inside wall. But the guys did a good job getting the car fixed. I still felt good about the car."

Pemberton admitted that was better than he felt, initially.

"The way our year's been going -- we've blown the car up, like, five different times in 10 races," Pemberton said. "And then on Lap 1 [Sunday] we hit the wall. I was just -- I couldn't even believe that's what happened."

But Pemberton quickly gathered himself and his team.

"We had to make sure the tires wouldn't blow out because the fenders were rubbing," Pemberton said with another laugh. "We had a fender rub on the left front, a fender rub on the left rear; some of the crush panels were knocked out ... We had to take care of that stuff.

"So it wasn't bad enough, and it was early enough [in the race] that we got it fixed, and we were a good enough car to come up through there, a little bit. A good enough car to take two tires and make something happen, a little bit better there and to keep fighting our track position.

"We were a fifth- to a 10th-place car, time-wise, realistically. The one pit stop where we needed to be good we lost some spots, and it was just one of those things where you kind of get behind and it's just grueling to get caught back up.

"Then we made that two-tire call there at the end, and it paid off. But we did do one [two-tire gambit] earlier in the day, so we had a little bit of an idea what that was going to do for us."

"The biggest thing that you needed was track position," Vickers said. "I'm sure some guys complained about the way the rubber was laying down -- great job by Goodyear. But I love it when the track lays down rubber like that, makes it slip and slide and you have to move around and find a groove."

Vickers, 27, looked in pretty good shape after the race and Pemberton gave his driver a couple shout-outs on that score, though he also pointed out the left rear interior panel was the one that was deranged and, since it was opposite where the exhaust pipes exit it was less of a concern.

"He's done real good with his hydration and we've kept on him about drinking a lot," Pemberton said. "But it was still a really tough race. I think our carbon monoxide unit works really well."

It all left Vickers looking ahead to Charlotte's Coca-Cola 600 in two weeks.

"I think it does [give us momentum]," Vickers said. "We needed a good run. We've run well all year, but the guys deserve a good [finish] -- we just haven't had it. We've had a lot of bad luck this year. I've had fast cars, but sometimes there's nothing you can do. You have to keep charging, you can't give up. That's what [Sunday] was for us."