Looking more closely at your picture, I misunderstood you a bit. It looks like you're doing distal pad both ways. If that's natural for you, I'd say try to keep it straight.
What works for me is using the joint or even the second pad. Which looks like:
If I do distal pad it looks like this:
Which makes for a cramp in my hand fairly quickly.
One trick you probably already know: balance a coin or a spent case on the front sight post while you dry fire. It'll tell you when you're disturbing the pistol during the trigger pull.
Also, you're right handed, do you know which eye is dominant for you? My shooting improved when I learned I'm cross dominant. Well my pistol shooting did...rifles still pose a small challenge sometimes.
Oh, and if you use the laser a lot, try without it. I tried laser grips on my EDC P229 and took them off quickly. I found I was concentrating more on the damned dot than proper fundamentals. Like I said in my post in the other thread, don't try to make the pistol a better arrow, work on being a better archer.