Mike, I think "dragging him down the track" is spot-on. In fact, during the entire "race" to Washington, they rarely let GTO out of their sight, even rebuilding his carb for him if I recall! They like him for some reason: he's the equivalent of his car, a lot of flash and bravado, but he could "be a real street sweeper if he put some work into it."
He's redeemable, as he shows later. The implied comparison of people to machines is an occasional motif. The mechanic warns the driver "we can't be drinking a lot of Cokes and stuff, it'll slow us down." (quoting from memory--my girlfriend caught that one!) GTO says he's gonna "go into orbit" if he doesn't change something soon.
So Wilson and Taylor have found a man to build, having built the ultimate street machine, and perfected the ultimate continuous scam. Well, 3 men really. There's no competition left, and they're moving beyond the toys and money to the next phase of their lives. As Pirsig famously said in Zen, "the motorcycle you're working on is yourself."
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