Four people, including a girl aged six, remain seriously injured in hospital after a British millionaire and sports car enthusiast crashed his £600,000 Porsche at high speed into a crowd of spectators during a car show in Malta.
Paul Bailey (55), who made his fortune from a phone conferencing business, was among 28 people injured when he lost control of his Porsche 918 Spyder as he drove along an unused airport taxiway at the Paqpaqli motor show on Sunday.
Two of the injured spectators were in a critical condition, Malta’s health minister, Chris Fearne, told the Times of Malta.
Two others who had been deemed critical, including the young girl, remained seriously injured but their condition had improved, he added.
Bailey, who is renowned in the supercar world for being the first person to own the ‘holy trinity’ of such machines - the Porsche, a £900,000 McLaren P1 and a Ferrari LaFerrari, worth £1.2m - was shown on video footage being removed from the badly damaged car with his head bleeding heavily.
One witness to the crash, who races classic cars himself, said he felt Bailey should have been wearing a helmet and other safety gear while driving at such speed, and criticised the flimsy barrier between the track and spectators.
Michel Zarb, who had his own cars at the show, told the Malta Independent: “The safety measures in use were not adequate and the barriers put up are the same as those used to keep people behind them as they wave to the Queen.
“When I arrived on site on Sunday at around 7am I said to myself how dangerous those barriers are because they are not protecting the spectators. Little did I know that a few hours later a terrible accident was going to happen.”
He said he saw Mr Bailey being removed from the Porsche, and noticed he was not wearing safety equipment: “When I participate with my cars I make sure I am wearing the safety gear and that the barriers are made out of concrete.”
Malta’s president, Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, who rode in the supercar a few hours before the crash, was left “traumatised and devastated” by the incident, a spokeswoman for her office said.
Mr Bailey and his wife Selena sold their phone conferencing business, Worldwide Group Holdings, for £28m in 2012. Bailey, who is from the east Midlands in England, is director of Horsepower Racing UK, a company that hires out race cars.
Bailey acquired the last two of his trio of supercars in a high-profile shopping trip in January last year.
Along with his wife he drove the McLaren from his Rutland home to a Ferrari dealership in Nottingham to pick up the Ferrari he had ordered two years previously, before the couple then drove to Cambridge to collect the Porsche.
At the time he said: “I live a very surreal life and being the first to own all three does not feel real. This is why I want to use and share the cars with enthusiasts.”
Bailey has since done that, selling raffle tickets for someone to get a chance to drive the McLaren.
Last month, he booked the entire Silverstone racing circuit in Northamptonshire so a professional driver could test all three cars and see which was the fastest.
Bailey had brought four of his sports cars to Malta for free to support L-Istrina, the biggest fundraising event of the Malta Community Chest Fund, which is chaired by the country’s president.
A witness to the crash told the Times of Malta: “The car was speeding down the taxiway when a back wheel went on the grass. The car spun out of control, went through the barriers where a large crowd was watching, and into the area of the static car exhibition. Many people were hit, there was chaos and screams.”
The rest of the motor show, hosted by Malta’s president, was cancelled.
Guardian