The hosts began the game on the front foot, and just when they would have wanted the ball to fall to one of their many talented forwards, it was defender Edmond Tapsoba who hooked over from six yards out from a corner.
After Nathan Tella fired over, the visitors came inches away from taking the lead on 11 minutes, as Lucas Holer knocked the ball down for Philipp Lienhart and the Austrian international’s rasping drive from the edge of the box clipped the bar on its way over.
Freiburg troubled again on the quarter-hour mark when Maximilian Eggestein should have done better with a close-range header, but planted it straight at Lukas Hradecky.
Florian Wirtz was causing trouble as usual, and on the half-hour mark won a penalty when he had his legs swiped by Ritsu Doan.
Die Werkself’s creator-in-chief dusted himself down to take the spot-kick himself, but was denied by a stunning Noah Atubolu save low to his right to preserve parity.
However, just when it looked like the teams would go in level at the break, Wirtz weaved some magic and played in Schick, who cheekily dinked the ball over the advancing Atubolu in stoppage time.
Wirtz firmly put his missed penalty behind him five minutes after the break when he latched on to a perfectly weighted pass from Exequiel Palacios and steadied himself before smashing a shot high into the roof of the net.
Freiburg would have been forgiven for folding after this barrage either side of the break.
Still, they bounced back and reduced the arrears soon afterwards when Vincenzo Grifo struck a low shot that crept into the bottom corner past a diving Hradecky.
However, that was merely a false dawn for Julian Schuster’s men as Schick severely punished the visitors.
He rose above Matthias Ginter to glance a header into the bottom corner from an inch-perfect Wirtz cross on 67 minutes before the pair combined again just seven minutes later as the Czech international rifled home a low drive from the German’s cutback to complete his hat-trick.
The visitors were looking slightly punch-drunk, but Schick wasn’t finished yet and he buried a header from Alejandro Grimaldo’s cross for his fourth and Leverkusen’s fifth.
Freiburg could offer nothing in response as they rounded off the year with a sound beating which brought an abrupt end to a three-match unbeaten run, while Leverkusen end an incredible 2024 in second place and hot on the heels of Bayern at the summit.
Flashscore Man of the Match: Patrik Schick (Bayer Leverkusen)