Well, last night went pretty well for my maiden run with the M-05. The following is what I tried and how it worked but, as they say, your mileage may vary

I started the night out with the car built out of the box with TRF mini dampers using 2-hole pistons and 40WT with (I think) 2 O-rings inside on all 4 corners to limit droop (resulted in about 4mm ride height with little to no droop). I ran the kit-setup springs of Yellow FR and Blue RR. Also I run Orion 3400 lipos with NO weight added so my total weight including a VERY heavy body was 1235 grams.

The first heat I tried my old Ride tires with Ride inserts. This was a tire setup from my M-03 so they were hard compound w/ hard insert FR and medium compound with soft insert RR. This worked very well but resulted in a little too much push both on throttle and off throttle. It was very forgiving and didn't even hint at traction rolling.

The next heat I tried the new RP Mini tires I had picked up using 36R with medium Ride insert FR and 30R with medium Ride insert RR. The car had ridiculous amounts of traction and corner speed but was really easy to traction roll, even with my Dual Rates turned down to 80%. The car was significantly faster than the first round but way too difficult to drive!

Next I tried some Tamiya tires. They are the 55-series treaded radial tires from the latest Mini Cooper kit (I think!) with soft (blue) tamiya inserts all around. These were very good, much like the Ride tires but with a bit more steering and almost no traction rolling. Still not as fast though as the RP Tires.

In the Main I went back to the RP tires (same configuration) as above but with some weight added to the chassis and battery. I put 42g in the center top of the chassis (right behind the motor) and 14g on the right battery "wing" (the car is significantly left-biased for weight) plus another 28g on the bottom-center of the battery. I sauced full RR and 1/2 FR and turned my Dual Rates down to 75%. The car was very dialed now with all the traction of the second heat but with almost no tendency to traction roll . This was just about the best mini I've every had to drive and I managed to get 2nd overall for the night.

So from my experience so far I think the M-05 works well with the stiffer springs on the back and with either the same tires all around with slightly harder inserts on the front OR slightly harder tires on the front with similar inserts all around.

Sorry for the long post, but I just wanted to share my experiences fully!

Cheers,
Mike