I reconstructed the published 18-circle packing and searched a +/-30-unit neighborhood for all triangle vertices on the 1e-9 integer grid, fixing one vertex and one edge horizontal. Exact squared integer tests enforced every pairwise center distance, each circle-to-edge distance, counter-clockwise orientation, and frame bounds. The best feasible candidate has area 74.803353064593020268, vertices (0,0), (13.577449128,0), (6.361686297,11.018763887), with all 18 published centers unchanged.
P66 · Unit circles in a minimum-area triangle · Discussion