Difficulty reset - Grand Prix / Career / My Team

I'm having an issue where I have had to retire multiply race events due to the fact that I set my menu options to Elite and difficulty before starting either a career mode for being a driver, My team or even setting a full race year in Grand Prix mode.

Once I have set the difficulty and turned off assists that I don't need, the game will carry over those settings to every event that is played WITHIN that stint of game play.

Fine no problem BUT if I exit the game and return to the race weekend without completing the ENTIRE weekend in one sitting (100% weekends) then the rest of the weekend seasons difficulty is locked to 25 and I'm unable to change because the menu has a lock icon and I get a prompt saying that the difficulty cant be changed during an event.

So if I complete all practice season at my preferred difficulty and exit the game to return later for quali, the difficulty is locked and capped to 25. If I complete all FPs+Quali, exit and return then the race event is locked and capped to 25. So far the only way to get around this is to either retire for the event completely and load up the next event and change the difficulty at the workstation or start entire new careers.

I'm throwing away multiple hours of game time because I am having to restart every career based event basically every day. The furthest that I have managed to get is Imola, Im looping the first 3 events and this issue has basically locked me out out the other 80% of the game. 

Also I don't have drivable safety cars. They are no wear to be found.