The accident involved a 31-year-old Russian man driving a female passenger and an infant, who swerved into oncoming traffic and slammed into the car driven by the 46-year-old Briton, the interior ministry in Tyumen region said in a statement.

The organisers of the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge rally named the dead woman as Emma Wilkinson.

Wilkinson was travelling with a co-driver when the incident happened, they said.

“Emma’s partner and fellow competitor Peter Davies is understandably shocked but unhurt,” said the website of the rally, quoting a witness that saw how the oncoming car “swayed off its lane and smashed right into their car.”

The collision occurred on Wednesday evening on one of Russia’s highways in Siberia linking regional centres Omsk and Tyumen.

“It was going at high speed and one theory is the driver fell asleep,” the unnamed witness added, according to the website.