Alrighty, here's my review! The only thing to note is that everything has to be in comparison to the Madone 6.5 WSD because that's my baseline at this point. I've ridden the Madone since the middle of January.

I put my other saddle on the Cervelo and also took the Easton wheels off, swapping them with my Bontrager Race X Lite's. I'm selling the Selle Italia saddle and Easton's that came stock with the Cervelo and they've never been used. ....not even for my 10 minute first ride.

First impressions - this thing is light! The Madone is nothing to snuff at either but this R3 is really light! I'm not really the weenie weight type so I don't know the frame, fork, blah blah blah weight on one bike vs the other but there seems to be noticeable difference in weight between the two bikes. I'll have to throw a bias out there, though, because my Powertap wheel and Maxxis training tires on the Madone certainly don't make it any lighter because those puppies are kinda heavy. I've heard that the R3 is in fact lighter than the Madone anyway.

The ride feel - the R3 has a nice feeling to it, you can feel the bike beneath you. So you can feel the strength and the stiffness beneath you. As soon as you go to hit a turn (most noticeable at slow speeds) this puppy wings around it. The whole bike has the feel that the tubes have super tiny diameters. I'm sure that doesn't make sense to anybody but me but when you're riding and if you were to swerve and snake around, it's like there's no delay or feel to the movement when you swerve the bike. It simply just goes there...if it's not there already. lol. The bike moves side to side (or around a corner) as fast as your neurons and synapses fire. It's pretty incredible.

The R3 handles well and holds a pin straight line. It is incredibly quiet over rough roads, bumps, holes. After playing around for the first couple minutes the main feel that came to mind was that this bike is the perfect racing bike. It can track a line well but it's also extremely reliable because you can turn on a dime. I also kinda like the bars that came with it, too. It has an interesting bend that I've never seen or used before. The bend is very sharp so the ends of the drops seem relatively close to parallel to the ground. The drop on them is shallow so it's weird because I'm used to deep drops.

The only two ways this bike didn't blow me away on were the out of the saddle climbing and out of the saddle sprinting. It felt a little bit dead to me. Because of how light the weight is, I was certainly expecting it to fling itself forward after the first two hard pedal strokes but I didn't really notice anything.

In comparison to the Madone - the Madone is a bike that has a feel of almost a Harley. It feels super wide (a figment of your imagination) and super stable beneath you and it's such a comfortable ride and feel that you could ride it all day. In a weird way, the way I can describe the Madone's ride/feel is "friendly". Not in a "soft on your parts/not harsh ride" kind of way but that it rides like it's smiling and happy. (corny, I know. ...but the best way I can describe it. )

The most noticeable difference between the new Madone and the R3 is the twitchiness. On the Madone, it's the front end. On the R3, it's the entire bike from skewer to skewer. The Madone has a spring to it and jumps with you when you get out of the saddle. The R3 just goes along with you. When you're doing a seated climb on the Madone, you can feel every pedal push thrusting you and the bike forward. I didn't quite notice it on the R3 to the degree you can feel it on the Madone.

That's it for right now.....