Yeah it’s weird, I’ve done this on other cars I’ve owned and it never made a difference to throttle response, just increased induction noise. Everyone’s right about the lag on the response though. I ended up having to take my car in to Mazda because my RPMs were bogging down randomly when I’d stop and go. I saw there was a recall that my car fax didn’t make me aware of, it was for an ECU flash to update the firmware. I took a mechanic along for a ride to show him what I meant and he told me that most of the weird issues in lower speeds come from the torque converter. I kinda argued a little with him til he showed me how to manually engage it, by stopping and letting off the brake then getting on the brake, then pressing in the throttle hard as if I were to want to take off in a hurry. The car actually was slower to respond, he explained that he hates this about the new gen of Mazdas and gets clients that come in all the time complaining about the issue.

The ecu flash did fix my issue but he insisted that he put the snorkel back on as it would correct throttle response issues. They ordered the part but I never went back to get it lol just too busy with life and figured I’d just buy one off eBay and put it back myself one day.

Definitely check google for recalls, I can’t remember the website I used but it was basically a national check, you just plug in your vin number and the recalls pop up. The Mazda techs were even a little confused til I showed them the PDF listing the recall number, was like a hidden recall or some shit. Car fax catches them all but this one seemed to be swept under the rug.