I support your idea of staying in novice matches a little longer, but I'd just like to say that I got a feeling that you think "normal" or "non-novice" matches are hard or scary. They are not. Only thing that is scary and hard there is new player that doesn't communicate and doesn't take any advises from his crew and captain. Since you're not that guy, I think there's nothing to fear. More likely, you would benefit from it. if you would try moral matches and get a good captain that would explain things to you.
Maybe before you go to normal matches, hop in to few more novice matches and play engineer and gunner (I assume you mostly played pilot so far). When you learn how gunner and engineer works, then you will really get the most of your "feel" for the ship. As pilot, it's very helpful to know, what each weapon can do, what are their arcs, what are their limits, cons and pros... same for engineer.
When you put yourself in that spot, you'll see what your engineers must do when you're the one on helm. You'll see for example, you can't leave moonshine on for 10 seconds, because engineer won't be able to keep it up with repairs - just one basic example.
Long story short, to be as effective pilot and captain as possible, you have to know your ship and how all the classes works.