Remove require 'rake' from Rakefile?

The standard application Rakefile looks like this:

# Add your own tasks in files placed in lib/tasks ending in .rake,
# for example lib/tasks/capistrano.rake, and they will automatically be available to Rake.

require File.expand_path('../config/application', __FILE__)
require 'rake'

Rails::Application.load_tasks

So this is my question: Why the require 'rake'? I tried removing it and running a Rake task works perfectly like before.

I've attached a patch (applies to master) that removes the line. In case there's an actual reason it's there it can be ignored. :)