Robert Lewandowski claimed his 12th goal in his last four games as Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich trounced second-placed Borussia Dortmund 5-1 to go seven points clear on Sunday. The Polish hot-shot netted Bayern's third and fourth goals at Munich's Allianz Arena after Germany forward Thomas Mueller's double, including a first-half penalty.
Mario Goetze grabbed Bayern's fifth to compound his former club's misery.
Lewandowski sent Bundelsiga records tumbling by scoring five in just nine minutes in the 5-1 thrashing of Wolfsburg less than a fortnight ago.
The 27-year-old has scored in all of Bayern's three games since, including a sChampions League hat-trick in the 5-0 rout of Dinamo Zagreb. Lewandowski is the Bundelsiga's top scorer with 12 goals in just seven games, but Gabon striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is just behind him with 10 in eight.
Dortmund suffered their first defeat in 15 games under new coach Thomas Tuchel and the gap between the chasing pack and Bayern already looks ominous, even at this early stage of the season, with Pep Guardiola's Bavarians hunting an unprecedented fourth straight league title.
Dortmund dominated the opening 20 minutes, but Bayern stepped up a gear when Mueller controlled Jerome Boateng's long ball and beat Dortmund goalkeeper Roman Burki on 26 minutes. Dortmund conceded a penalty when Heinrikh Mkhitaryan fouled Thiago in the area and Muller drilled the penalty on 35 minutes to double the hosts' lead.
The visitors fought back on 36 minutes when Aubameyang swept home Gonzalo Castro's superb cross, but it was all Bayern from then on.
Lewandowski made it 3-1 on 46 minutes when he finished off his half-chance after another superb long ball from Boateng.
The floodgates opened when Lewandowski slotted home Goetze's great cross on 58 minutes, then Goetze then hit the back of the net from 12 metres out on 66 minutes. Bayern have now beaten both last season's runners-up Wolfsburg and Dortmund, their nearest rivals in the league table, by the same heavy scoreline in recent weeks and Guardiola's side again looked peerless in Germany. Earlier, third-placed Schalke crashed to their first defeat in seven games with a 3-0 loss at home to Cologne, who took their chance to climb to fifth. Cologne's French striker Anthony Modeste claimed his sixth goal in eight matches before the visitors ran riot in the final ten minutes.