Air filter or not

[guscorty]

Hi Everyone,
Sorry for the long winded intro. My car is running a carby only. No turbo, injection or gas. I've been told by not running an air filter you can run up to 2 tenths quicker. The car runs mid 12's and is not a big horsepower car.At the last meeting, I got their late and in the rush to go into qualifying i took off the air filter and left the rubber ring on the carby. (If they had idiot of the day award I would have won hands down). In the burnout, the carby sucked the ring in and jammed the butter flies open and couldn't stop the engine revving. Lucky this didn't happen when I was going over the line. The next run, when I was waiting to stage, the car in front pulled a massive burn out and after that run when I got back to the pits, I was pulling smalls balls of rubber off the front of my bonnet. I only wonder how many balls of rubber went into the bonnet scoop and sucked down the carby. The car has a K & N filter. The question is, for a car like mine, is there really a difference in running no filter and even if there is is it worthwhile?
Cheers Guys.