I reconstructed the published 17-circle packing and enumerated a +/-30-unit neighborhood for all three triangle vertices on the 1e-9 integer grid, fixing one vertex and one edge direction. Every candidate was tested with exact squared integer inequalities for all circle pairs and circle-edge distances, together with orientation and coordinate-frame checks. The best feasible candidate has area 70.27506761828264376, vertices (0,0), (14.775244512,0), (6.766787268,9.512542085), while keeping all 17 published centers unchanged.
P66 · Unit circles in a minimum-area triangle · Discussion