Real Madrid have moved four points clear at the top of the La Liga table courtesy of a 3-0 victory over city rivals Atletico Madrid at the Vicente Calderon this evening.
Cristiano Ronaldo stole the headlines on Real's final league visit to the stadium, netting his 39th hat-trick for the club to fire them to their first Madrid derby victory in La Liga since April 2013.
It was the first time that the two sides had met since the Champions League final in May, with the stakes made even higher by Barcelona's failure to beat nine-man Malaga at Camp Nou earlier in the day.
Atletico had the first opening of the evening after nine minutes when Saul Niguez made a smart run into the middle, but his acrobatic first-time volley went wide of the near post.
Ronaldo went into the match without a goal in his last six Madrid derbies, but it was soon evident that he was in the mood and he was inches away from breaking the deadlock after just 12 minutes when his towering header was kept out by Jan Oblak before Gabi completed the clearance.
Luka Modric was the next to come close as the visitors began to gain an element of control of the game, but this time it was a more comfortable stop for Oblak in the Atletico goal.
There was nothing the keeper could do about the opener midway through the first half, though, as Ronaldo broke the deadlock with a 30-yard free kick that took a big deflection off teammate Raphael Varane on the way through.
It was the three-time Ballon d'Or winner's 350th league goal from his time in La Liga and the Premier League, making him only the third player to reach that landmark in Europe's top five leagues.
Ronaldo continued to be the chief tormentor as the first half progressed, and he almost had a second shortly after the half-hour mark when he latched on to a clever through-ball from Isco, turned past Diego Godin but then scuffed his finish straight at the keeper.
Atletico, in contrast, struggled to create much going forward in the first half, but they came out much stronger in the second, with Yannick Carrasco sending a curling effort narrowly off target before Antoine Griezmann got in behind the defence and fired the ball across the face of goal from a tight angle.
A rare misplaced pass from Modric then allowed Griezmann to have Atletico's first shot on target of the night, but it was a simple one for Keylor Navas in the visiting goal to keep out.
Oblak was forced into a smarter save from Isco's volley at the other end shortly afterwards, but once again the keeper was helpless when it came to Real's second of the evening after Stefan Savic brought down Ronaldo in the area with an attempted clearance that he mistimed.
Ronaldo, predictably, stepped up himself and made no mistake by sending the keeper the wrong way with a clinical finish into the bottom corner.
Carrasco brought another routine save out of Navas as Atletico looked for a quick response, but their fading hopes of getting back into the match were extinguished once and for all when Ronaldo completed his hat-trick 13 minutes from time, tapping Gareth Bale's low cross home at the back post.
The goal saw Ronaldo overtake the great Alfredo di Stefano as the top scorer in Madrid derbies for Real, taking his tally for the fixture up to 18.
The visitors could have made things even worse for Atletico late on when Modric failed to keep a header from Dani Carvajal's cross down, while at the other end Navas denied the hosts a stoppage-time consolation by thwarting Carrasco from close range.
The result means that Real are now unbeaten in 29 games in all competitions, winning their first domestic Madrid derby in the last 10 attempts and becoming the first side other than Barcelona to beat Atletico at the Vicente Calderon since December 2014.
Atletico, meanwhile, have now lost back-to-back league games for the first time in more than four years and have conceded two or more goals in three successive league outings for the first time since November 2011.
The defeat leaves Diego Simeone's side fifth in the table, nine points adrift of their city rivals after 12 games.
Barney Corkhill
