Kawasaki brings the Ninja 300 back with a track pack, and the twin does the rest

The Ninja 300 is back on the price list, which is a slightly funny way of putting it — the record on our books has carried the 296 cc parallel twin as available since late 2023 — but Kawasaki’s relaunch with a track-pack bundle is aimed at a specific gap. Our own Duke 250 review and comparison pieces treat the KTM as the track-day default under 400 cc, and Kawasaki is answering with the only twin-cylinder in the bracket and a parts bin addressed to the circuit.

The machine underneath the marketing is the interesting part, because it is unchanged: standard Ninja 300 at ₹3.45 lakh, KRT Edition at ₹3.52 lakh in our sample listing, and the accessory bundle itself is a figure this article introduces, at ₹38,000, that the listing does not yet carry.

What the twin actually is

Spec-first, from the record: 39 bhp at 11,500 rpm and 27 Nm at 10,000 rpm from a liquid-cooled parallel twin, a claimed 165 km/h, 179 kg kerb, a 785 mm saddle, and a 17-litre tank. Our own language for it is that the Ninja is “the motorcycle for a buyer who was promised a supersport and mostly gets one”, and the midrange is the punchline — the torque curve is broad enough that the twin pulls from 4,000 rpm in sixth on an on-ramp, which is usability dressed up as race pedigree.

That midrange is also why the track pack exists. A single-cylinder gives you a reason to use the clutch at a circuit; the Kawasaki gives you a reason to use the throttle, and its silky gearbox and slipper clutch let the rider hold the power band through corners that the Duke’s peaky 249 forces out of gear. Against the volume faired Yamaha of the class — 155 cc and a ₹1.55-1.72 lakh sticker in our R15 record — this is simply a different order of machine, and a different order of price.

The honest chassis criticism

Our listing already says the quiet part: the 37 mm telescopic fork and the 299 mm front disc are road-spec, not paddock-spec, and the pegs touch down early for a 300. The track pack is Kawasaki conceding exactly that sentence — braided line and race pads for feel and stamina, sliders for the drop that peg-scraping eventually invites, stickier rubber because the stock fitment is the compromise. What a pack cannot sell you is geometry: the bike remains faster than its front end’s confidence level, on the record’s own assessment, and the answer at the circuit is to ride it to the chassis, not the engine.

A company brief around the relaunch pitches the package as a ladder — track days as the recruiting tool for riders who will keep the fairing on the street — and leans on the twin’s smoothness as the thing single-cylinder graduates notice first.

Where it lands

The relaunch asks a simple question of our catalogue’s sports shelf. The Duke 250 is the sharper instrument at ₹2.19-2.29 lakh; the Ninja 300 asks roughly ₹1.2 lakh more in sample-listing terms to be the smoother, heavier, more usable one with a 165 km/h ceiling and genuine highway range. The track pack narrows the hardware argument without pretending to close it. Buyers after lap-time per rupee will keep buying Austrian singles; buyers after the sound, the fairing and a motorcycle that commutes without a weekly physio budget — the Ninja’s own listing words — now have a reason to walk back into the showroom.