  We perform fully nonlinear numerical simulations to study aspherical
deformations of the critical self-similar solution in the gravitational
collapse of ultra-relativistic fluids. Adopting a perturbative calculation,
Gundlach predicted that these perturbations behave like damped or growing
oscillations, with the frequency and damping (or growth) rates depending on the
equation of state. We consider a number of different equations of state and
degrees of asphericity and find very good agreement with the findings of
Gundlach for polar $\ell = 2$ modes. For sufficiently soft equations of state,
the modes are damped, meaning that, in the limit of perfect fine-tuning, the
spherically symmetric critical solution is recovered. We find that the degree
of asphericity has at most a small effect on the frequency and damping
parameter, or on the critical exponents in the power-law scalings. Our findings
also confirm, for the first time, Gundlach's prediction that the $\ell = 2$
modes become unstable for sufficiently stiff equations of state. In this regime
the spherically symmetric self-similar solution can no longer be recovered by
fine-tuning to the black-hole threshold, and one can no longer expect power-law
scaling to hold to arbitrarily small scales.
