Gonzalo Higuain again showed his killer instinct on Sunday, scoring two expertly-taken goals as Juventus claimed a late 3-1 win at Torino after their less illustrious neighbours had scored first and dominated the game.
Substitute Miralem Pjanic scored the third Juventus goal as the Serie A champions opened up a seven-point lead over AS Roma and AC Milan, who clash on Monday.
In other games, Dries Mertens scored a hat-trick to lead revitalised Napoli to a 5-0 rout at leaky Cagliari while bottom club Palermo slumped to their ninth league defeat in a row, losing 2-0 at home to Chievo.
Torino, a respectable seventh under Sinisa Mihajlovic, made a bright start and went ahead after 16 minutes when Andrea Belotti headed in Daniele Baselli's cross for his 11th goal of the season.
Juve were on the ropes but levelled 12 minutes later when Higuain collected Mario Mandzukic's flicked pass in his stride and burst through the Torino defence to place his shot past Joe Hart.
Torino had the better of the second half and Adem Ljajic could have put them back in front but his shot clipped the far post.
Juventus, though, have made a habit of grinding out results and they did it again with two goals in the final 10 minutes.
A long ball forward found Higuain and, although the Argentine was closely marked, he turned past Antonio Barreca and fired an unstoppable shot past Hart, his ninth league goal of the season.
Paulo Dybala set up the third with a run down the touchline and Hart did well to save shots by Higuain and Pjanic before the Bosnia midfielder scored at the third attempt.
Mertens broke the deadlock in Sardinia in the 34th minute with a shot on the turn before Napoli's inspirational captain Marek Hamsik turned in a rebound on the stroke of halftime after Lorenzo Insigne headed against the bar.
Midfielder Piotr Zielinski scored with a long-range shot six minutes after the break before Mertens completed a memorable afternoon by scoring twice in three minutes.
Napoli are fourth in the table with 31 points from 16 games while Cagliari are 14th but have shipped 37 goals, the worst defensive record in the league.
Surprise package Atalanta suffered a shock 3-1 defeat at home to Udinese while Bologna and Empoli played out a goalless draw.
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