Daniele Valestri, who provided two Ferrari vehicles to be driven by Maltese during Paqpaqli ghall-Istrina held earlier this month, is in critical condition following a road accident near his home town in Italy.
Contacted, Tonio Darmanin, who organises the annual event Paqpaqli ghall-Istrina in collaboration with the Community Chest Fund, expressed his shock at the news. He said that the whole Paqpaqli team was in shock.
Mr Damanin said that six months ago, he had flown over to Maranello, Italy to convince Mr Valestri, who owns a company called Pit Lane Red Passion, which offers the fabulous possibility to drive super cars, to rent out two Ferraris to the event organisers so that they could be test driven in Malta against a donation which went towards l-iStrina.
He said that it was hard to convince Mr Valestri at the time to rent out the cars to us but when he did agree, he came over to Malta with the rest of his team and fell in love with the island and found that the event itself was a very serious one.
Mr Darmanin said that Mr Valestri had just invested in “some beautiful equipment” including a Formula 1 car with two pillion seats.
He said that he is very familiar with the area where the accident occurred since he test-drove cars along that road, which he described as quite dangerous with fields and ditches on either side of the long-stretch of road.
“But apparently, it was a technical fault of the car he was riding in that led to the accident, Mr Darmanin said.
"I wouldn’t be surprised that he was about to purchase the car he was in, a Lamborghini Aventador, to add to the rest of his fleet," Mr Darmanin said.
Mr Darmanin said that the whole Paqpaqli team was in constant contact with Mr Valestri and his team following their visit to Malta, and reiterated that they were all shocked to hear he is in critical condition.
A man who pulled out the 25-year old driver of the Laborghini and Mr Valestri from the wreck said that the driver had his face completely burnt while Mr Valestri was in agony. The vehicle exploded twice immediately after the passengers were extracted from the Lamborghini.