This paper investigates, without any regularization procedure, the sensitivity analysis of a mechanical contact problem involving the (nonsmooth) Tresca friction law in the linear elastic model. To this aim a recent methodology based on advanced tools from convex and variational analyses is used. Precisely we express the solution to the so-called Tresca friction problem thanks to the proximal operator associated with the corresponding Tresca friction functional. Then, using an extended version of twice epi-differentiability, we prove the differentiability of the solution to the parameterized Tresca friction problem, characterizing its derivative as the solution to a boundary value problem involving tangential Signorini’s unilateral conditions. Finally our result is used to investigate and numerically solve an optimal control problem associated with the Tresca friction model.