Get through the numbers, formulas and prose and you get the point of the report: Racing is good. Good for cities, states, jobs and tourism.

That's the message the parent company of three NASCAR tracks is trying to send to residents, fans and even politicians this week as the Martinsville area gears up for one of its two big annual weekends of racing.

International Speedway Corp., which owns Martinsville Speedway, Richmond International Raceway and Darlington Raceway, launched a three-day public relations trip -- starting Tuesday in Martinsville - - to trumpet the tracks' value to their communities based on reports commissioned by ISC.

Martinsville's economic impact in Virginia is valued at $170 million. The track, according to the report, provides 2,824 jobs either directly or indirectly. Darlington's figures will be released today and Richmond's on Thursday. Martinsville's figures will rank second to Richmond.

"It's a way, for us to show our communities how large a partner we are locally," Lenny Santiago, an ISC spokesman, said of the studies. "It demonstrates the power of motorsports and NASCAR in stimulating an economy."

The company has had such studies done since 2007. The results have led to mind-boggling totals. Daytona International Speedway has an overall economic impact of more than $1 billion. Talladega Superspeedway's impact in Alabama is more than $400 million. Kansas Speedway, which has only one Sprint Cup race, has an economic impact of $243 million. All those studies were done by the same firm, The Washington Economics Group, that did this week's reports. More such studies are being done with results likely coming next year.

Such numbers could lead one to believe the roads in those communities should be paved with gold. While 60,000 or so fans coming to Martinsville for a race are beneficial, some skeptics remain.

Dennis Coates, an economics professor at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, has done similar economic impact studies and questions studies not academically driven.

"The first thing I would do is caution them to think about who did this study," Coates said of what to take from such reports. "You have to be a little bit suspicious of the numbers because they have an interest in the number being big."

Coates and another colleague looked at how either a NASCAR track or NASCAR-sanctioned event influenced monthly rents on residential units from 1993 to 2005.

His report found that the "mere presence of a [NASCAR- sanctioned] track is statistically significant and positive in several specifications.