Although you do need the fore and aft clearance between the glass and the aluminum baffle, it's not necessarily just the baffle that needs cutting.
On the outboard side you've installed a nice radius piece so the seal rubber will lay smoothly....excellent. So what were you planning at the inboard side? The rubber there also needs to be attached to the glass lip and lay against the tin. That's not possible with the glass at it's current length, given that the first bend in the center baffle tin angles it inboard, away from where the seal must lay.
Seems like many builders are hesitant to trim the fiberglass inlet flanges. In truth they don't need to extend any further aft than necessary to form a more or less horizontal flange tangent to the inlet radius. Left full length, It creates the above described sealing problem, and up in the top cowl, it moves the diffuser ramp rearward. It gets closer to the cylinder, an airflow pinch, right where an expansion is desired (left, below). Trimming the glass short moves everything forward (right).
Compare the short flange below with the OP photo. You can see how shortening the glass flange moves the inboard end of the seal (orange is rubber) forward so it can lay on the flat section at "A". Air pressure (red arrow) must push it against something if you expect it to seal.
Side note; another thread mentioned using a video camera to examine local flows within a cowl. I suspect the standard center baffle wall seen here is kinda dumb from an aero standpoint. The inlet flow has velocity, in particular if the cowl exit is large and the baffles have leaks. That sharp bend to go across perpendicular to the crankshaft probably makes the flow separate into turbulence at "B", which compromises pressure recovery...and we want all the pressure we can get. It would be an interesting spot to examine with tufts and a camera, if anyone is interested in that sort of thing.
There is no reason why the center baffle wall must have hard corners. It could instead describe a nice gentle parabolic curve (green lines).