Adam Driver isn’t miscast in the title role of “Ferrari,” Michael Mann’s trek through a month or so of 1957, a make-or-break year for the racing institution supported by a bespoke Italian performance sports car company.

Driver is tall enough to be Enzo, wears a pair of Raybans and a white-hair dye job well and has the necessary arrogance and droll elan in this, his second shot at playing an Italian-accented icon. He was in “House of Gucci,” remember.

But it’s a joyless turn in a script that misses any opportunity to attach heart, wit or higher meaning to the the “commandatore’s” pursuit of auto racing excellence.

“Jaguar,” the cold-blooded racer-turned-builder and tycoon purrs of one rival, “races only to sell cars. I sell cars only to RACE.”

You should hear what he says about Maserati.

“Racing,” he intones, is “our deadly passion, our terrible joy.” Ferrari had seen a lot of death when he races, and more as he guided his still-young (founded 1947) company through various racing seasons. In 1957, blood would cover the Ferrari badge.

In 1957, Enzo was facing bankruptcy, desperate for a white knight “partner” to invest in the company and allow him to remain in complete control. He was hiding a very open affair with Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), with whom he has a ten year-old son who doesn’t bear his surname, with only his wife and corporate partner Laura, giving a brooding, woman-wronged fury by Oscar winner Penélope Cruz, in the dark about this betrayal.

His accounting books being what they are, with Ferrari’s race teams prepping for LeMans and every other competition he could get them in — Formula 1 included — it’s down to one big make-or-break dash across Italy, the epic Mille Miglia — to boost the brand image for that pitch to Ford, Fiat or whoever might want to “partner” with Ferrari.

The racing sequences here are next-level intimate, putting us in the car better than most any film that preceded this one. The crashes in that no-rollbar, pre-seatbelt era are horrific. The open wheel racecars were death traps, even the open-top two-seater road racing cars were nobody’s idea of forgiving and “safe.”

We follow the young Spanish driver Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone) as he tries to get Ferrari’s attention, then lands a driving job at the very moment another driver has a fatal accident. Enzo is that cold-blooded.

After de Portago lands the gig, he has to contend with Ferrari’s fury that “When I win, I can’t see my cars (in the newsreel and photo coverage) for starlet’s asses.”

That’s largely because de Portago was dating Mexican actress Linda Christian at the time.

Mann, the action icon who made “Miami Vice” a cultural phenomenon and “Heat” the benchmark of modern heist pictures, finds himself pinned-in by history with this “true story” film. He’s competing not just with the far more fun and dazzling “Ford v. Ferrari,” but with Steve McQueen’s “LeMans” and the movie against which the entire motorracing movie genre is measured against, 1966’s very similar “Grand Prix.”

One thing the best films on motorsport have in common is a great score, and there’s no sugar-coating the fact that Daniel Pemberton’s music isn’t on a par with the music of “Ford v. Ferrari” and can’t hold a candle or a quarter note to Maurice Jarre’s glorious march in John Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix.”

The stand-out in the supporting cast is “McDreamy” actor-turned-sports-car-racer Patrick Dempsey, going white-haired as veteran Ferrari driver Piero Taruffi (51 at the time), one of the drivers Enzo respected most. But even he suffers from the plot’s narrow attention on Enzo’s affair, potential heir and the financial troubles we hear about but don’t really see.

The man is still sparing no expense to campaign his racing teams.

I have to say, this characterization, this soap operatic (infidelity, etc.) story, has too much in common with Ridley Scott’s period-perfect but empty Adam Driver star vehicle “House of Gucci.” There’s a lot of well-turned-out style, a bit of intimate bickering, and pasta is served.

But here, that comes between heart-stopping crashes, all of which really happened.

The racing/car-building pedigree of the picture plays as more “Lambourghini: The Man Behind the Legend,” a malnourished indie, than “Ford v. Ferrari.”

Money was spent. Much of it shows up on the screen. But that story…

Rating: R for some violent content/graphic images, sexual content and profanity

Cast: Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley, Gabriel Leone, Giuseppe Festinese, Patrick Dempsey, Derek Hill and Penélope Cruz

Credits: Michael Mann, scripted by Troy Kennedy Martin, based on a book by Brock Yates. A Neon release.

Running time: 2:04