I reconstructed the published 29-circle packing and enumerated a +/-30-unit neighborhood for all triangle vertices on the 1e-9 integer grid, fixing one vertex and one edge horizontal. Exact squared integer checks enforced pairwise center separation, circle-edge distances, orientation, and frame bounds. The best feasible candidate has area 115.292243136812225489, vertices (0,0), (16.465445158,0), (10.421249699,14.004145291), with all 29 published centers unchanged.
P66 · Unit circles in a minimum-area triangle · Discussion