NEW YORK − Buckle up, Oscar watchers.

Penélope Cruz is back in the awards race with Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” an exhilarating real-life drama about Italian sports-car titan Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver).

In the movie, which closed out this year’s New York Film Festival, the Spanish actress plays Laura Ferrari, Enzo’s wife and an equal partner in the storied automotive company. Cruz is the scorching, melancholic heart of the film, receiving spontaneous applause for multiple scenes during Friday night’s first sold-out screening.

Set over three months in 1957, “Ferrari” (in theaters Christmas Day) follows Enzo and Laura as they attempt to pull their business out of bankruptcy while grieving the recent death of their son, Dino, from muscular dystrophy. Laura has reluctantly agreed that Enzo is free to sleep around with other women. But the arrangement curdles when she discovers that Enzo not only has a longtime mistress, Lina (Shailene Woodley), but also an illegitimate son named Piero who is primed to inherit the company, should Enzo choose to publicly acknowledge the boy.

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In lesser hands, Laura could be all fire and brimstone: a scorned wife unleashing her fury. But Cruz, 49, manages to find the anguish and fragility beneath the rage, delivering a tremendous performance that has been frequently singled out by critics. She is heavily predicted by awards pundits to pick up a best supporting actress nomination this year, which would mark her fifth Oscar nod after “Nine,” “Volver,” “Parallel Mothers” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” (She won supporting actress for the latter in 2009.)

Thanks to a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement amid the Hollywood actors’ strike, Cruz was able to attend Friday’s premiere along with castmates Driver, Woodley and newcomer Gabriel Leone, who portrays heartthrob racer Alfonso De Portago.

During a post-screening Q&A, Cruz detailed the immense responsibility she felt playing a real person. She was able to spend time with members of the Ferrari family, who shared old love letters between Laura and Enzo. “I got to understand so much better who she was and what this relationship was about,” Cruz said.

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Shooting the film in Italy, she also got to meet many acquaintances of Enzo and Laura, who downplayed her role in building the Ferrari brand.

“I started really being bothered when I asked about Laura,” Cruz recalled. “All the answers were about Laura being difficult, Laura being crazy. ‘She didn’t do anything for the company, what are you talking about?’ So I started taking it personal and needed revenge for that.

“She was one of the first investors in the company,” Cruz said. “She sold some things that she had and created this together with him. So the more I knew about her and how much she had to fight and suffer, and how ignored she was, the more I had this need of, ‘Let’s tell her story.’ “

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There are some thrilling racing sequences in “Ferrari,” along with one particularly harrowing crash that stunned the entire festival audience. But much of the film is devoted to themes of legacy and grief, and looking at Enzo through the prisms of Laura and Lina.

“We talked about how when he’s with Lina, it’s his most at ease,” Driver said. “And when he’s with Laura, it’s his most business-like and who he feels he needs to represent to the (Ferrari) factories.”

Many classic race cars were meticulously recreated for the movie, which Driver and Leone both got to drive.

“I sat in one, but the car never moved,” Cruz deadpanned, earning laughs from the crowd. “The experience was just sitting there.”