I reconstructed the published 22-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 tests enforced pairwise center separation, circle-edge distances, orientation, and frame bounds. The best feasible candidate has area 89.127744311925975448, vertices (0,0), (15.579603689,0), (6.605806950,11.441593264), with all 22 published centers unchanged.
P66 · Unit circles in a minimum-area triangle · Discussion