Yesterday I brought the R086-D to my weekly fast group ride. The 2 hour training ride consists of a section of rolling hills and several sprint/drag points where we can easily hit 38-40mph on the flats with a proper tailwind. While it's technically not a road race (we re-group after every sprint section and traffic light) all the local race clubs do show up to make it quite competitive. For these type of rides I only trust my T1500 and Allez Sprint for obvious reasons.

Last year as an experiment I once brought my VeloBuild VB-168 with the same Elite Drive 65D wheels as a test. Big mistake. I was struggling all evening to put the power down as the 168 was noticeably sluggish/flexy (for me). Not great out of the saddle either.

I can confirm with both Bike Radar and Road.cc that the R086-D is a proper aero bike. Sprinting, climbing, handling into the corners at speed. The bike is fast on the flats and I did not detect any noticeable deficiencies compared to the T1500 and Allez Sprint. In fact this frame may just be slightly faster on the flats than the Allez Sprint, but I don't have any scientific data to prove it.

I've been showing up to this group ride for 2 years. Everyone knows each other well. But last night I was complimented on my ability for closing down gaps and make several bridges to the lead groups attacking up the road (I never do this LoL). While some of this is from experience and fitness, honestly the R086-D is such a bike to ridden fast with confidence.

Last thing note about the frameset specifically - I would invest in some microshims for underneath the headset cover and do a dry run of fitting the entire cockpit (including the expander plug and compression cap) before permanently routing the cables. Initially the headset cover was very slightly rubbing on the headtube. A 0.25mm microshim immediately solved the issue. I can't say if the problem was a anecdotal or a tolerance-related. No one else has reported it but just a heads up to be safe.